


Accendo

by IttyBittyTeapot (LittleSeedofDarkness)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: BDSM, BDSM but not exactly, Basically I'm fixing this, Bittersweet, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Dominance, Dominant Levi Ackerman, During the Four Year Time Skip (Shingeki no Kyojin), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, Inappropriate use of a feather duster, Levi/Eren Yeager-centric, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Post-War, Romance, Spanking, Submission, Submissive Eren Yeager, Tea, because they have no idea what that is, canonverse, time skip? what time skip, when they feel like it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2021-03-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:29:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 44,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27715454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleSeedofDarkness/pseuds/IttyBittyTeapot
Summary: Eren has problems. Levi does too. Hanji helps.Or the tale of how two hurting idiots stumble into a new relationship dynamic, try to figure themselves out, and help each other through the agony of war and its aftermath.*See Author's Notes
Relationships: Levi/Eren Yeager
Comments: 125
Kudos: 134





	1. Prelude: Exordium

**Author's Note:**

> **If you are not reading this work on AO3 nor from a download you obtained from AO3 for your own personal use, it is an unauthorized copy, or you are accessing it from an unauthorized application.**
> 
> Welcome to my new tale. 
> 
> I don't like having two "open" stories and I like my writing bubble, but it's been an odd fucking year, so here we are. Anyhow, I was hesitant to open a new document when I began this, but I'm glad I did. And once again, [sugarplumsenpai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sugarplumsenpai/pseuds/sugarplumsenpai) was there as a dear friend, as a supporter of my decision to indulge another work, and as always the best beta/editor. I can't thank her enough for all her brilliant help and support. <3 
> 
> Eren has persistently bothered me about this particular 'thing' between him and Levi for a long time. Sadly, for him, it's never fit more than subtly in any of my other works. I ignored him for a very long time, but as this year dragged on and I worked on the final arc of [The Ghosts In Us](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10391235/chapters/22948104), he became rather bothersome, and I, once again, gave into his poking since I can't ignore persistent characters. 
> 
> This work is like my others in tone, but it also deals with issues that aren't usually so obviously present in my writing. I say this, so it's clear that there are themes which are a departure from my ordinary fare. I don't tag much, though I tagged this more than I normally do. There are scenes and dynamics that relate to BDSM, but since our modern ideas of such don't exist in their world (and Eren and Levi have no fucking idea what they're doing), it didn't fit as a tag without more clarification. 
> 
> Though it's consensual, and encompasses things like dominance, submission, etc... our modern ideas of BDSM and terms like; "safe, sane, consensual" and what have you tags don't fit. Not at least as it feels to me. This is, as I said, two bumbling idiots somehow tripping their way into something new that they don't quite at first understand. They also probably do some shit that would be considered bad etiquette, but to explain any further would spoil it. As far as any further warnings, my blanket tagging/warning statement on my profile applies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Epigraph -
> 
> When You Are Old
> 
> When you are old and grey and full of sleep,  
> And nodding by the fire, take down this book,  
> And slowly read, and dream of the soft look  
> Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
> 
> How many loved your moments of glad grace,  
> And loved your beauty with love false or true,  
> But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,  
> And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
> 
> And bending down beside the glowing bars,  
> Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled  
> And paced upon the mountains overhead  
> And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
> 
> \- W.B. Yeats

March 30th, 859

Some people display keepsakes, and others value a beloved piece of jewelry. Sometimes, it’s nothing lavish but as simple as a battered book or a time-worn chess set. Eren’s mother had a collection of treasured plates from Grisha. Mikasa had a ratty scarf gifted to her by a little boy who thought he understood the world but didn’t honestly know how cruel it could be.

Eren does not possess baubles nor excessive stacks of clothes. He is not a collector, though his pocket is occupied by a lent handkerchief that, after almost ten years, he hasn’t returned. A once nearly lost trinket box sits upon the bureau, protecting a knotted strand of deer hide, both presents. And there are two items that, save for his most desperate moments, live hidden, stashed in Levi’s drawers. 

Eren sits at the edge of the bed. It’s as though he’s perched at a lake’s bank about to plunge in. 

An enigma is cradled in his trembling hands, a band of supple leather that was a gift from Levi years ago. It represents a vow and a dear, bond-forging secret. It’s a symbol of trust deeper than that which they shared in battle.

It’s been over a year and a half since Eren beheld his cuff. 

He recalls that evening. It was two fortnights after Levi came to check on him, when unlike his previous visits, he brought a bag and his footlocker and didn’t leave. 

During that late summer twilight, Levi didn’t fasten it around Eren’s wrist like he used to, though he treated him almost as if he were wearing it. Eren held it gripped in his fist until they fell asleep wrapped around each other while bathed in the sunrise. 

After that, Eren convinced himself he didn’t need it anymore. 

But try as he has, the urge to wear it has been like an impending wave or an encroaching storm. It’s not so much the object itself that warms him and douses his despair. It’s Levi’s hands on him, the look in his eyes, the tone of his voice. His dominance. Greater still, it’s Levi releasing Eren from the burdens he carries in the only way they can be. 

For too long, Eren’s attempted to ignore them.

But he should have died half a year ago, and since then, there’s been a persistent niggle to open Levi’s bedside table and look upon the adornment and its similar yet different brother. 

Eren’s tried to throw his desperation from his mind. He’s tried to find distractions. He’s disallowed himself from relieving his morning ache while indulging in the fantasy of wearing either. 

He looks at the strap sitting in his sweaty palm. 

The fawn-colored suede is near two inches wide. When it encircles Eren’s wrist, the edges meet as if it were made for him. And though some leather is inflexible and unforgiving, the underside of this ‘bracelet,’ meant to lie against his thrumming pulse, is as soft and pliant as velvet. 

He allows its lacing to drift between his fingers. Levi wouldn’t be displeased if he were to put it on. After all, it’s his. He might be shocked at its reappearance. Then again, Levi’s ever perceptive, and with how often he’s been looking at him with his gentle concerned-Levi frown and asking Eren what his problem is, he might be waiting for this.

With a nod, Eren wraps it around his wrist, sinches the latchets, and fastens them as well as he can one-handed. Levi usually ties it on. He does it better, but this should do. 

Eren holds out his arm, makes a fist, and then wiggles his fingers. His heart patters with increasing speed. 

The cuff looks like it belongs there as much as it ever did, but maybe, Eren thinks, it’s not quite enough. Levi won’t return for a while yet, and it gives him time for contemplation. 

Refocusing, he turns toward the nightstand, halting when the drawer creaks as he slides it open. It’s a silly thought, but his fingers tighten on the knob while he ponders if it’s a protest or bidding. 

His vision skims the band around his wrist, and after a breath, he tugs on the drawer, satisfied by its dying squeak. 

He leans closer and peers inside. Beneath Levi’s neatly folded handkerchiefs and two tattered bookmarks, he finds a bundle wrapped in simple muslin. 

Though in ways, his collar’s emotional symbolism matches his cuff, over time, the meaning behind it grew to be different. Whereas the cuff requests Levi’s dominance, Eren’s collar pleads for his ownership. Not as though he were an object, and not requiring, nor desiring Eren’s subservience, but instead belonging. Eren is Levi’s, and not because he demands it, but because it’s an honor he was always meant to have. 

Eren’s fingers twitch. His heart swells. He swallows and then pulls the package from the drawer, shutting it with more careful quiet than he employed opening it. 

Setting it upon his lap, he unwraps it with slow movements. As though he might tear the fragile fabric. He doesn’t breathe. It’s almost strange to look at the collar now. It’s made of soft, deep chestnut hide, the color of November. Its buckle is patina-accented brass, and as domineering as Levi is when Eren dons it, its lingering scent of leather conditioner is that of tender benevolence and relief. 

He brings it to his nose, shuts his eyes, and after an inhale that leaves his lungs burning, frowns. The smell of oil is fresher than expected. When he examines it closer, he realizes that although he’s not looked upon the collar in the last six seasons, Levi has. 

He’s cared for it as always. Treating the leather, making sure it would be comforting rather than harsh while encircling Eren’s neck should he choose to put it on. 

Curious … did Levi miss it too? 

It seems like decades since Eren submitted. Despite how he wants to plead for it, after the last time, he realized their relationship had changed and never expected to again. 

Today, as he clasps the collar around his neck, it feels like the first time. 

With all his hairs rising, he remembers that evening and shudders at how awkward he was. 

The scorching feeling of shame hasn’t been with him for ages, but back then, he was so embarrassed he can feel the fire on his cheeks as though he were a teenager again. It doesn’t matter that it’s been years. He still wonders how Levi managed not to laugh nor to tell him what a fuck up he was. 

Then again, maybe Levi’s always been as fucked up as Eren is.


	2. Chapter One: Principium

851

As he often does, Eren wakes in Levi’s quarters. He’s sweaty. His throat is raw. And weary from dreams that rarely give him any reprieve, he’s smashed himself into the leather chair by the hearth. Not in the highback seat that’s Levi’s, but in its mismatched sidekick. 

Eren’s chair is also red leather, though its stitching is rougher. Its arms, wooden legs, and scrolling, not as intricately carved. Not that Levi cares for trivialities, but Eren appreciates function over form. To Eren, the battered older seat is infinitely more comfortable than Levi’s fancy armchair. But what Eren cherishes more than anything is Levi allowing him to doze there. 

His palms steam as he rubs his eyes before he spies Levi at his desk. As he quietly stretches, he watches him pause and dip his nib into the inkwell. Levi’s cravat is cast to the desktop. His top three shirt buttons are undone, his sleeves are rolled, and his hair is what for Levi is disheveled. For anyone else, Eren would assume they simply brushed it from their face. 

Levi narrows his eyes and sets down his pen. Eren shivers while wanting to hide his face. He’s been caught staring … once again. 

“You had a nightmare,” Levi says. 

True, but Eren wasn’t going to mention that. This isn’t the first time he’s disturbed late-night paperwork, and the last thing Levi needs is Eren whining about his sleep terrors. Besides, Eren is as used to them as he is with the soiled feeling in his chest. 

“Same one?” Levi prods.

Aching regret settles in his bones. The savagery replays, his eyelids slam like storm-blown shutters, and he swallows the gummy salt in his throat. 

To rid himself of the sting ever requires Levi’s touch. At its worst, Levi nips Eren’s lips senseless. Sometimes Levi brushes his neck with feathery promises. Other times he rubs his back. And when the onslaught isn’t crippling, being held is consolation enough to lull Eren back to sleep. 

It looks as though Levi still has work to do, but hiding the truth serves no purpose. 

“Mostly,” Eren says. “That shitty dream. Memories.” Dingy fragments of calamity resurge. “They aren’t mine.”

Levi doesn’t reply. He caps his pen, neatens his papers, and goes to the kitchenette. Tea. Levi will make Eren tea as he always does, and then hopefully, he’ll silently beckon him to his bed and hold him with an arm slung over his waist, his lips on his nape. The only sounds will be Levi’s small sighs and hums and perhaps Eren sniffling through restrained tears. 

He scowls to himself. His eyes are hot. He’s done so well holding himself together. But Eren won’t blubber because Levi doesn’t judge. He gives him what is required—simple, quiet kindness. 

Even before they were intimate, Levi offered Eren consolation in wordless physicalities, a squeeze to his shoulder, a pat on his back. A shared pot of tea or a handkerchief to sop up his blood. Before long, it was a gentle kick under the table, then a warm embrace that felt like everything Eren had ever been missing. After that, it was Levi’s warm body near him under his lavender-scented sheets. A few months later, it was a kiss, and then Levi’s arms around Eren while he was inside him, and their skin collided as if they were fusing. 

At least to Eren, it felt like that.

Eren hasn’t heard _I love you_ yet, but he sensed it before the first time Levi ordered him to sleep in his bed. It was after the cave. His forehead looked as though the gash running its breadth had never been there, but Levi frowned and traced the long gone wound with his finger. He didn’t say anything, but the gesture said more than any word ever could. 

Eren presses his cheek against the chair’s other side. He watches Levi fill the kettle and set it on the stove. He knows precisely what hand he’ll use to open the cabinet and which will retrieve the caddy. Levi will choose Jasmine. It’s the wee morning nightmare tea. Eren never asked why, but the flowery scent and flavor assuage, and there hasn’t been a time it didn’t chase the nasty prickles from his skin. 

When Levi returns, he sets two cups on the table between them, fills Eren’s first, and then sits.

“I didn’t make it too strong,” he says. “Drink.”

“Thanks,” Eren says. He skims his thumb over a painted periwinkle near the rim. This is one of Levi’s oldest tea services, chipped and scratched in places. He hasn’t explained how he acquired it, and there’s a third matching cup in the cabinet that stands unused, but on a rainy day last autumn, Levi served Dragon Pearls in the set. When he handed Eren his share, Eren remarked the blue glazing was pretty, and Levi said only important people drink from this china. 

Maybe it was how Levi’s eyes changed, but at the memory, a lump catches in Eren’s throat. His chest still aches, and he wants Levi to tell him about the tea service, though he keeps the request to himself and manages a whisper. 

“Can I sleep here tonight?”

“You already were.” Levi’s lips twitch. “You know you don’t have to ask.”

“I know,” Eren says and shrugs. His tea smells like comfort. “I like to, though.”

Levi’s indeed told him he doesn’t need to, but Eren fears the day Levi will stop loving him. He’ll halt him from climbing into his bed, and Eren’s heart will collapse. He envisions himself undressing while Levi washes. When Levi walks into the bedroom in his nightshirt, he’ll stare blankly as Eren stands by the bed in his drawers, ready to rest his head on Levi’s chest. Eren can imagine the line on his brow before he tells him as nicely as he can to go next door to his own room. 

Eren has dreamed it. And crossing the threshold to Levi’s bedroom without asking feels like an invitation for disaster. Like walking through a jinx built from stout oak jambs. 

Levi sips his tea, and when his eyes meet Eren’s, he holds their gaze. 

“You keep my feet warm.”

That’s almost _I love you._ Eren’s heart gallops, and he has to fist the blanket over his chair’s arm not to go to Levi and lay his head on his lap. Levi combs his fingers in Eren’s hair when he does that, and the throbbing in his temples that rarely ceases, disappears. 

“Would you rather stay up?” Levi asks, his forearm flexing as he brings his cup to his lips.

The nightmare might come again, but Eren’s exhausted. And Levi has better pillows. “No, I can sleep. Sorry for keeping you up.”

“I’d be doing paperwork.” Levi pours himself another serving of Jasmine. “You were steaming when you woke up.”

Eren’s head snaps up, and he gulps the rest of his tea. He grimaces at the burn, but it gives him a moment to think. He must have been thrashing or screaming something awful. 

He sees Armin flying toward the Colossal in sacrifice. Erwin dead. Levi’s disappointment in him when he argued. Mikasa crying. Mikasa never cries. 

“Memories?” Levi asks.

“Parts of it,” Eren says. “It was different this time.”

“Your old man?”

Eren nods. “Grisha … others.”

“You’ve pushed yourself too hard,” Levi says and purses his lips. “Combat hysteria.”

“I guess.”

If Eren were in his own room, he’d have thrown something when he awoke. He would have pulled at his hair and lost his breath. Even here, tucked before Levi’s flickering hearth, the reminders of his weakness and conflict squeeze his chest. 

Levi hums and refills Eren’s tea. He pulls a vial from the chess table’s drawer. “Valerian,” he says. “Hanji gave it to me. We can read.”

It’s been a few nights since Levi read to him, and they paused right after the little hero was stabbed by a poison blade. The ranger was looking for healing herbs. He nods as Levi pours a few drops of the tincture into his cup. 

Mild as the remedy is, it overpowers the flavor of delicate Jasmine with what Eren imagines tree roots must taste like. When he winces on the first gulp, Levi raises a commanding brow that instructs him to drink it all.

“Tastes like shit,” Levi says after Eren finishes and then divides the last of the tea. “Final cup’s for bed.”

He stands, and on the way to the bedroom, brushes Eren’s hand. It whips up the scent of ink, medicinal balm, and Levi’s aftershave. His touch is a silent _C’mon,_ but Eren wishes Levi would say it aloud. 

He follows after Levi, shuffling behind him, but freezes at the threshold as his gaze locks on the bed. 

Calming remedy or not, what if he thrashes around in his sleep? Levi’s blanket could be ripped. If he screams, he’ll wake Levi. And there’s the most frightening prospect: what if he bites himself? 

Clutching his stomach, he holds himself against the dread of night horrors. He squeezes his eyes shut then tries to squeeze his inner eyes along with them, but the recollections wash over him like a gutter’s waste. 

It’s as though peering at a painting composed of blood, fire, and sooty dust. He sees people perish, their bodies eaten or smashed. There are scraps of humans. Horses scream, soldiers scream. Armin’s charred visage judges him, his lipless mouth sneers around his too-white teeth, and though Eren pushes himself, though he tries to save everyone, he fails. 

The longer hair that Eren has yet to grow blocks his vision. He can hear his own voice, older, deeper: _Dad, stand up._

The secrets he keeps whisper in his ears. He hasn't even told Levi … 

Eren sways. He holds a hand to his head. Through the barrage, his eyes are blurry and flooding, but worse, his heart is flooding. 

Everything is his fault. 

It should have been him.

He wavers. He winces.

He gulps on a sob. 

_I’m never strong enough._

“Eren …?” Levi says, and Eren hears the squeak of the bed’s springs. 

“Just—ju—” he stutters as he shakes his head to reclaim his vision. 

Levi’s sitting at the edge of the bed. Eren’s last cup of golden Jasmine is on the bedside table. Levi’s steams along like a twin in his hand. His features are soft in that way Eren only sees beyond this door, and subtle as it is, the line in his forehead hollers fret. Not Levi’s usual worry, but the indomitable concern that comes during late hours. The kind only Eren seems able to oblige. Not that he means to. 

It feels like the window’s been opened, and January is blowing in. He rubs his eyes, hears Levi sniff his serious inhale. 

Even in what for others would be the most generous of care, Eren is ruining bedtime. He ruins people. He ruined Mikasa and Armin. And in his bid to save them all, he’s going to destroy everyone else. He is already hurting Levi. 

Sometimes people think Eren’s stupid, but he’s sharp enough to see what he does to others. 

“Eren,” Levi repeats.

Eren blinks through the dark. Maybe he focuses on Levi’s eyes. Perhaps he focuses on the vapors rising before them. He opens his mouth, but nothing comes. 

Levi looks at him funny. “Come to bed.”

“Now?”

“Yes.” Levi seems frustrated. “What’s your problem?” 

Yes, Eren is definitely frustrating. 

He uses the door frame to right himself. 

He wants to put his head on Levi’s shoulder and weep. But Eren is not going to cry. He promised himself after the rooftop. Tears of anger or rage are acceptable. It’s how his eyes react. But no more tears of despair and hurt. No more pleading sobs. He is a man—a man with an unchangeable destiny.

His mouth moves soundlessly. 

Levi leans forward as if to rise. “You look nauseated.” 

“I fucked up …” Eren says. 

Confusion cuts across Levi’s face. “All right …?”

“Levi—” 

“What do you need?” 

Eren doesn’t know. The remorse and self-condemnation slither like molten worms beneath his skin. His heart and mind hurt. Providence is a boulder around his neck. His future is already sucking at his feet. He wants to scratch his arms until they bleed. Despite his promise not to, he wants to tear at himself. He wants to feel his teeth in his flesh, and rip out his hair. If only to give himself a measure of relief.

He needs someone to take the burden away. 

“Eren …” Now Levi sounds worried too. 

His head snaps at that, and when Eren speaks again, he whispers something he can’t adequately account for. 

“Punish me,” he says, flinching at the plea.

“What?” Levi jerks his head and frowns. “ _Punish you_? For what?” 

“I—” 

“What did that dream do to you?” Levi asks, dragging a hand through his hair. “That bad? You feel like shit.”

That achy gurgly feeling the tea settled returns. Eren knows the sensation of regret. He rubs his chest. 

“I guess,” he says. “I only wanted you to …” 

“Fuck …” Levi breathes. “To punish you? How? Why?”

“I don’t know!” he pleads, hands flying to his temples. _Just please, please. Please, Levi, make it go away._

“Damnit, Eren—” Levi breaks off. “What could I possibly …”

“Do something,” Eren murmurs, “anything. Please.” 

Levi’s fingertips drum on the nightstand. “You could clean the stables, shovel more shit. I can make you run laps. Have you scrub the head with a toothbrush.” He hesitates. “Make you sleep in your own quarters …?”

“No, please not that.”

“Should I beat you?” 

“I don’t know,” Eren whines. “Just make it—”

“Take away the biscuits?” Levi says, sounding exasperated. 

“Make me hurt!”

“Hurt?” Levi asks, thumbing his nose as he sniffs. “You want me to smack you around?”

“No, but …” 

Standing, Levi’s hands close and open before he sits again. “Should I”—his fist thumps against his thigh—“put you over my fucking knee?”

“I’m not a child!” 

“No,” Levi says, voice too level given Eren’s irrationality, “you’re not.”

Growling through his indignance, Eren meets Levi’s eyes. “I’m _not_ a child.”

“You’re grown, yes,” Levi says. “Taller than me.”

It’s late. Their comrades are fast asleep. But Eren’s hand slams on the wall. 

“Are you making fun of me?”

“No,” Levi says. “Not in this. Sit the fuck down.” 

Harsh as the words are, at the kind command in Levi’s voice, the pang in Eren’s chest feels as it does when Levi holds his wrists to the mattress and sucks the skin below his navel until it stings and leaves bruises. Eren wishes they wouldn’t heal. 

He looks at his bare feet. “I’m not a kid.”

“Eren.” 

“Yeah …” His cheeks are so hot, he’s surprised they aren’t steaming. 

“Look at me,” Levi says, and Eren does. 

For once, Levi looks stunned before he narrows his eyes and sets down his tea. “Just as I thought.” He pats the bed. “Come here. Sit.”

Levi said to sit. Eren should laugh at himself for his unthinking compliance, but he drags himself to Levi’s bed. 

He bites his lip when he feels Levi’s comforting warmth beside him. “I’m sitting.”

“Good,” Levi says. He sips his tea yet returns it to the nightstand. “At least you didn’t ask me to cut you with knives.”

Eren scowls, though he doesn’t meet Levi’s eyes. “I didn’t ask you to do anything.”

“You asked me to punish you,” Levi says. “Anyone else who asked that … knives might be an option.” He holds his hand over Eren’s. “You should be careful what you ask for.”

An admission hits his midriff, but his throat closes. 

_I would ask you for anything._

“You’re flushed,” Levi says as he brushes hair behind Eren’s ear.

“I’m sorry. Forget I said it,” Eren says. He grasps the hem of his shirt, ready to take it off, get into bed, and put his tantrum behind him. 

Bed with Levi would be nice. Maybe Levi will forgive him for being so erratic and give him kisses. If he’s lucky, Levi might touch him too. Then he can close his eyes and drown in him and pretend he doesn’t want to beat the hell out of himself or have Levi do it for him. Maybe he can forget how he reacted or the frantic feeling building as he keeps his eyes trained on Levi’s lap. 

His fists tighten against a tide of fantasies; the yarns of Levi’s blanket caressing his cheek, Levi’s hand resting on his nape, the phantom slap of Levi’s strong-small hand on his skin. 

He tears his gaze away as he feels a familiar squirm in his belly for entirely unknown reasons. His thighs tremble, and he presses them together, trying to rid himself of the confusing foreign thrill. 

Maybe he hasn’t had enough sleep. Perhaps he’s utterly insane. 

_I’m not a child,_ he thinks. 

Levi reaches his arm out, and Eren throws himself into his embrace. 

“You still feel like crap?” asks Levi. 

Eren nods against Levi’s shoulder. “Sort of … I’m dumb. I thought you were making fun of me.”

“My sense of humor’s shit, but I wasn’t calling you a child.” He kisses Eren’s ear. 

“You were joking?”

“At first.” Levi nibbles this time, his fingers tight in Eren’s hair. “Sometimes … I don’t know what to do with you,” he says, and yet his voice is laced with such affection it makes Eren tremble. 

“I don’t know what to do with me either.”

“I try,” says Levi, tugging Eren closer. “You know there’s nothing good about me.”

“You’re good enough for me.” 

Eren wants to say Levi is perfect. 

But as much as his perfection lies on the surface of Eren’s thoughts and sits on his unworldly tongue, he knows it isn’t true. It’s just Levi is perfect for _him_. 

“Hey, Levi?”

“Hm?”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Yes.”

_Should I … put you over my fucking knee?_

Hiding his face in Levi’s neck, Eren holds him tighter. He wraps his arms and legs around him until he’s in his lap. The embrace is so tight, Levi will have to pry him off. 

“When you said you were joking at first …” he trails off and sucks in a breath. He doesn’t feel as audacious as he did a moment ago. “Does that mean … um …” Fuck, he really does sound like a kid. “I meant, does that mean it stopped being a joke?” 

Pulling back a hair, Levi frowns. He looks curious. 

“What part?” he says, resting his hand on Eren’s jaw. “I’m not going to punch you in the face.”

Eren fiddles with Levi’s collar. He fastens the top button on Levi’s shirt and then unbuttons it. His mouth is dry, and when he tries to repeat Levi’s earlier words, his tongue feels like he licked dust. 

“That you’d …” He gulps and stares at Levi’s legs as if they held all the answers to his woes before their eyes meet. “About your knee …” 

“That I’d put you over it?” His eyes glint, and the right corner of his lips lift with a quirk between concern and amusement. 

“Yeah.”

“You can’t say it?”

Not sure whether to nod or shake his head, Eren opts for nodding. He buttons, unbuttons, and rebuttons Levi’s shirt. Eren would like to ask properly. He would like to say the words, but they don’t come. 

He’s so fucked. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s hurt and aching, and now despite how strange the request is, trying to ask is like tripping over rocks. 

When he was thirteen, in the barracks, the guys used to pass around pornographic publications and woodcut printings. There was one … Eren can see it now, and he feels like he’s burning. It always made him scowl how popular that piece of paper was. There was a man bent over a table, and the other was … 

Eren scrubs his face. He shakes his head. He digs his fingertips into his eyes. And then he looks where Levi’s cravat would be if it were daytime. “No, I—I can’t say it.”

Levi is quiet for a moment. His fingers stroke Eren’s neck. Eren can feel his gaze on him, but he doesn’t lift his eyes higher than Levi’s chin. 

He can hear Levi swallow before he says, “You don’t have to say it.”

Levi’s hand slides down Eren’s back. He touches their foreheads together, and the bashful heat on Eren’s cheeks burns hotter. 

_Please._ Eren inhales a shaky breath. He can’t say it, but he can think it. _Do it._

Levi nods. “Okay?” he asks, fingers caressing the small of Eren’s back before they slip beneath his shirt. 

His touch is warm and tender, the pressure not insistent nor forceful, but safe. 

After a gulp that sends the last of his trembling apprehension soaring, Eren answers, “Okay.”

The motion is gentle as Levi coaxes Eren with a nudge. He crawls forward, feeling as though he weighs nothing in Levi’s hands. 

When he settles over Levi’s lap, he whimpers at the muscular warmth of his legs against his hips and stomach. 

Eren stares at a forget me not on the quilt as his breath hitches. Levi’s hand slides further up his shirt, rubbing soothing circles on his skin, the other combing his hair. 

“Maybe this helps,” Levi says and pats his arse.

It’s not a smack, but Eren yelps anyhow. “Levi …?”

He rubs where he has barely touched Eren over his pants. “If you want me to stop, say so.” 


	3. Chapter Two: Perditus Sum

It takes five of the weakest blows Levi’s ever landed on anything for Eren to start heaving. He’s as stiff as an oak plank, hands gripping the bedding so tightly, it looks as though he might shred it. 

Levi stops, grasps Eren’s hip, and tangles his fingers in his hair. He’s in another of those ganglier stages when his muscles haven’t yet caught up with his growth spurt, but Levi tugs him closer. It would be awkward if Eren rolled off his lap and fell on the floor. 

“Are you done?” Eren asks, his voice muffled by the quilt.

If Eren weren’t having such a difficult time, it might be funny how meek he sounds. 

“Do you want me to be?” 

Swallowing, Eren glances at Levi as if he should answer for him. “No …?”

“No?”

“No.” Eren shakes his head. 

Perhaps he didn’t give Eren enough time to settle. Levi’s taken morning pisses he thought through more thoroughly than this, but he noticed Eren’s expression, his reaction when he suggested putting him over his knee. The last in a slew of exasperated proposals spat from Levi’s sardonic mouth while inside, he chided himself for not being able to help. 

Despite roaring that he wasn’t a child, Eren’s eyes went wide, cheeks scarlet, his flush plunged down his neck and shot to his ears. Levi watched the battle behind Eren’s shocked visage, his bashful discomfort which didn’t adequately obscure his confounded yearning. 

Levi never expected such a farfetched notion would result in this, but Eren’s rarely predictable, and now, here they are. 

“Relax,” he tells Eren as he resumes caressing his back. 

Eren’s trouser-covered arse stares at him like a daring invitation. 

Levi’s never spanked anyone before, and though he once nearly suffered it, he’s never been spanked himself. There was a time when he was ten and came perilously close. The oily proprietor at the stall selling odds and ends in the Underground market caught him stealing buttons. Levi was young then and still small and weak from poor nourishment. He flailed and cursed as the stallkeeper wrestled him over his lap. 

People watched, they whispered, and deep in his gut, humiliation coiled. When the shopkeep tried to yank down his britches, Levi hung limply, feigning acceptance as he grinned to himself, then stabbed the fucker straight through his meaty calf. 

He got away with all of the buttons. When he returned _home_ , Kenny ruffled his hair yet said it would have been better to have taken it because now Levi had a reputation to uphold that he might not be strong enough to defend. 

In the end, it didn’t matter what Kenny thought. No one ever tried to spank Levi again. 

Since then, he’s found the idea utterly distasteful. As least as far as children are concerned. And this? He’s never contemplated this domain. Six months ago, he was certain no one in this miserable world would want to share his bed, let alone ask for this. 

Levi isn’t even sure what _this_ is. He sure as fuck isn’t hard, and Eren doesn’t feel like he is either. 

At least he’s relaxed under Levi’s hands, slackening enough that his knees are no longer locked and his nails aren’t attempting to dig to the quilt’s batting. 

Eren makes a sound when Levi slides his hand back to his arse. It’s not arousal, and it doesn’t hold fear, though Levi wouldn’t call it anticipation either. More an impatient yet nervous grunt. 

Levi gives him a gentle squeeze and halts a groan at himself when he thinks of Eren’s backside as a gift. It’s an absurd thought, but since the onset of their relationship’s physically intimate aspect, giving Eren pleasure and temporary peace has been an undeserved privilege. And though he’s not worthy of it, Levi’s honored he can touch Eren anywhere he desires, and he’s the only one who can. 

For now, at least. 

He swallows roughly in an attempt to dispel the paralyzation seizing his nerves.

For all his elegant prowess in battle, sometimes Levi’s limbs don’t obey. Right now, his hand is near glued to Eren’s behind. And Eren is waiting, beginning to squirm and tense once more, but Levi can barely twitch his pinky.

Grateful Eren would even have him, all Levi’s wanted is to see Eren’s smile and be the reason for it. 

But there’s no guarantee this won’t send Eren spiraling into a state worse than he was months ago before the war reached its recent and thankful lull. 

Walloping Eren is an uncharted first. It’s different yet similar to the others, and although each of their _firsts_ has come from sorrow, this one prods at the anxiety of the unknown. It presses at Levi’s unfazed ease and at times relish of delivering violence and inflicting pain. 

Eren’s first time sleeping in Levi’s bed came after a nightmare. Their first kiss, sloppy and full of pining rage, came after they released Eren from jail, and he chewed his arm until he was covered in steaming blood. 

The first time Levi made love to Eren, Eren had stared into the hearth all night after a day walking the cemetery visiting gravestone after gravestone. And the week had been suffused by Levi’s unspoken anguish over the lifespan the first time Eren took Levi too. 

Levi chews his lip. Why should this be any different? Perhaps suffering, emotional, and now physical is the most perilous and dire of the many adhesives that bind them together. 

It’s probably not _right_ in most people’s minds, but when has Levi ever done what is right? When has he ever cared? He’s fallen in love with his subordinate and charge, who is less than half his age, and he’s barely able to keep that to himself. 

Hanji knows. He can tell by the looks she gives him. Even shrouded by all her gloom and singular focus on Eren, Mikasa’s eyes fling protectively murderous glares at Levi whenever he is near. Though the mushroom head is now lost in his own turmoil and circumspect motivations, he seems aware nonetheless. And Connie is surprisingly perceptive. 

Nearly every shield Levi built has crumbled under the gaze of brilliant green eyes, a beguiling secret laugh, and the touch of large, yet tender hands. Levi could go on. He could compile a list of his follies longer than what would fit on a sheet of the parchment resting in his desk, but currently, there isn’t a point. It’s in his heart anyhow, and Eren is wiggling again. 

Levi thinks he hears a breathy, _please._

He doesn’t say anything but grips Eren’s shoulder and skims his thumb across his back. If Eren didn’t have his blasted shirt on, Levi could touch his skin unhindered and better feel the life beneath. Eren would comply if he tugged him up and told him to remove it, but Levi’s not sure he’ll still have the balls to lay him back down again. 

He raises his hand, and it feels as though something obstructs the motion of bringing it down. 

_What if he likes it?_ Levi thinks. _What if_ I _like it?_

As if in a reassuring answer, Eren wriggles out of his shirt and meets Levi’s eyes before he pivots awkwardly to take Levi’s hand and place it on his back. 

“You don’t have to,” he says as he resettles, cheek nestled on his folded arms. 

For a moment, Levi revels in Eren’s warmth against his palm, his muscles relaxing beneath his touch. He counts his breaths. 

“I want to,” says Levi. _I want to make you stop hurting._

Physical pain is infinitely more bearable than pain in one’s mind, or heart Levi thinks before his hand descends. Eren doesn’t yelp this time, and Levi doesn’t stop. He trains his gaze on Eren’s face, watching the tightness around his mouth relax and the little ‘V’-shaped furrow between his brows soften until it’s no longer there. 

He’s not hitting hard, nor fast. A punished child would probably laugh rather than cry, but it seems to be enough for Eren. He melts over Levi, his body calming, sinking like his bones are dissolving. 

Levi can’t look where he’s barely slapping, but he pays close attention to Eren, blood thumping with a clench of relief when his eyes close and he hums. 

The ‘punishment’ goes on for a few minutes before Eren goes stiff and sniffs, and although it likely hasn’t even stung, Levi can’t go on. 

It cannot be from the pain, but if he continues, Eren’s going to cry. And perhaps, it’s what Eren needs. Maybe it’s what he wanted, but if Eren’s going to weep, he can do it in Levi’s arms so Levi can press his lips to his forehead and hold him close. 

Eren might argue, but there’s a line cutting the breadth of his forehead. His blinking eyes take on a glossy sheen, and whether he’ll protest or not, Levi shifts and lies on the bed, tugging Eren as near as he can. Eren’s legs end up draped over Levi, effectively pinning him down, but he bears being trapped. 

“Thank you,” Eren stutters out. 

It sounds as though his teeth are clenched, and Eren’s jaw is working beneath Levi’s fingertips before his poorly stifled wail shakes them both. 

“Eren …” Levi says, his voice so softly soothing he startles himself. 

Shuddering, Eren clamps himself around Levi. His arms are vices, his legs squeeze like a nutcracker. 

In certain situations, using names often is like a prying knife that’s been pushed in with too much force. Digging his fingers into Eren’s waist, Levi amends his query. “Brat?”

Eren sobs at the nickname. He makes a wounded squeak that smashes into Levi’s chest and sounds like a broken string. Something profound and mourning, like those beautifully nasty cellos Levi’s not often had the privilege of hearing. 

What if he made it worse? If Eren would just say something, Levi’s pulse might slow, but Eren’s not talking, and he’s drenching Levi’s shirt and trembling and falling apart on the flowery quilt. 

Panic. This is panic. Levi is panicking. 

All of his stringent control is faltering. Eren’s broken him. Counting doesn’t work. Breathing makes him want to punch a hole through his wall. Eren’s bent and twisted him until he’s fractured, and Levi loves him for it. 

His mind races, grasping for something. There’s the handkerchief in his pocket, but it’s too far away. The tea on the bedside table must be cold, and every brush of his lips against Eren’s temple results in another choke. And Levi wants to sob with Eren. He wants to cry _for_ him. 

His fingers slide up Eren’s neck, his jaw, his cheeks. He presses him back so he can look into a face that will undoubtedly wound him. 

“Talk to me,” he says, desperate and terrified. 

Eren nods and whimpers, his voice thick with misery. “I’m not strong enough.”

“Did I hurt you?”

“No.” Eren shakes his head, then smashes it into Levi’s chest. 

“You’re strong.”

“I couldn’t save anyone.”

This old self-berating wound. 

Always with the savior complex. Levi loves Eren for that, too, as much as it seems to tear him asunder. He wouldn’t be Eren without the unreasonable and unattainable mantles he bears. 

His heart is too big and too small at the same time. 

Too big because it draws all to its center and holds the burden of every millstone within, and too small because no mortal can shoulder what he strives to.

Levi trails his fingers down Eren’s back. And for an aching second, he has to catch a hitch in his throat not to weep with him. He never thought someone would care for him how Eren does, and though smiles and moments of quiet joy between them are equal to the moments of sorrow and hurt, he’d never wish to be without him.

That Eren cares for him in any measure is a blessing. Levi never wanted to be loved. As alluring as his command and expertise in battle are to some, he understands he may seem attractive to one who is superficial. Eren’s affectionate isn’t shallow, though. It’s honest and digs past all his flaws and ugliness. Still, Levi isn’t deserving. 

It might be that Eren is young, but maybe he finds something worthy where Levi doesn’t. That’s what he hopes.

He is close to telling Eren he saved him, but exposing his weaknesses while Eren is so tender can only lead to ruin. He finds the Captain. 

“We can’t save everyone.”

“I can,” Eren says. “If I try harder.”

He quakes at his own answer. He inhales snot and tears. “Why can’t I?” 

There’s no consoling answer. It is what it is, and Eren is one of those brilliant souls who will never accept defeat nor death as an inevitability. Unless it’s his own.

Someday, Eren, like everyone else, will leave too, but Levi’s irrevocably attached and in love. He can’t protect himself. It hasn’t been a year, but he walks willingly into the inferno of his devastation if only to know home for as long as Eren will bestow him with it. 

Levi kisses Eren’s cheek, his lips. “It’s life,” he says, “and most of the time, it’s shit.”

Clearing his soggy throat, Eren rubs his cheek against Levi’s. “It’s not always shit.”

“There’s always tea.”

A wet snort finds Levi’s ears. “There’s you.”

Eren swipes the tears away, only for his eyes to fill again.

Levi’s own eyes burn.

“You’re still crying,” he says, ignoring the sting. Eren’s hair sticks to his forehead, and Levi pushes it away. 

“I feel better.”

Lately, Eren’s tried not to cry. Levi’s seen the twist in his face when he stops himself. He’s noticed how his nostrils flare and chin pulls. At night, in bed, Eren’s gone stiff in Levi’s arms.

It hasn’t done him any good, and Levi’s become exceedingly suspicious that it’s making things worse. 

“Sure?” Levi asks.

“Yeah,” Eren says. He wipes his eyes again. “I’m just sick of hurting.”

Levi has no answer than to press his lips to Eren’s. He tastes of salt, brilliance, and restrained misery. And Levi knows this is probably the worst way to deal with such agony. 

But Eren accepts Levi’s consolation so readily it’s as though he’s attempting to fuse them. Levi might be stronger, but Eren pulls him atop, his desperate longing, painful. Levi should stop him, though he doesn’t.

He practically tears Eren’s fly open.

Skin. Levi needs their skin touching, their sweat mixing, and Eren does too if he goes by how he is forcing his pants and his drawers down his hips. 

When they’re finally bare, and their clothing lays in a heap, Eren oily and stretched, Levi stops himself. 

He stills before they join. Eren whines as Levi presses his wrists to the mattress, but he kisses him in an attempt to convey what words can’t. 

He makes love to Eren with more quiet caution than he has ever before. Slow and thorough, pining for something he’ll never reach, with his hand cradling Eren’s head and his face buried in his collarbone. There he won’t see Levi’s somber yearning. There Eren won’t see his heart. 

It’s only in a moment of untamed weakness that Levi nips at Eren’s lips and, without forethought as he delves into a kiss, whispers, _mine_.


	4. Chapter Three: Expedius

When Eren wakes in the morning, as usual, dawn has yet to rise, and save for himself, Levi’s bed is empty. 

Though something is different. 

He had normal dreams—no memories of a sister torn apart by dogs. No fingers cut off before being herded onto a boat. He wasn’t Eren Kruger reliving each Eldian death he was responsible for. He wasn’t a father injecting his young son with titan serum. 

He rubs his hand down his face to make sure he’s not dreaming now. It seems too good to be real.

The sheets are silkier than they have ever been. His mind, clearer. And Eren’s body isn’t encumbered by the usual groggy morning burdens. 

He’s alone. It’s a fact that most days leaves his chest empty and his arms cold. But today is different, and when he hears a cupboard in the living area shut, he wraps the blankets tighter and tucks them up to his chin. 

He’ll have to leave before HQ comes alive with breakfast and showers and Mikasa’s nosey nose, but for a few stolen moments, Eren can relax and smile at Levi puttering around the kitchenette. 

Luxuriating under the heavy bedding, he closes his eyes and listens. There’s the drumming thump of Levi smacking the stubborn remaining drops from the teapot and his whispered threats at them. The scent of soap powder mixed with Levi’s shaving balm fills Eren’s nose. And the dip where Levi sleeps is beckoning and warm.

He’d like to lie here for once and watch the sunrise through Levi’s window. Preferably with his head on Levi’s chest, or Levi’s head on his. 

Perhaps in the future, if they survive, they won’t have to be _covert_ —as Levi calls it. Grumpy to do so, yet resigned to begin his day, he buries his face in Levi’s pillow and groans.

_One last inhale,_ he thinks _._

And after a precious few moments basking, he tosses off the covers and drags himself to his feet. Regardless that the embers provide little illumination, he straightens the bed and then tends to dressing himself.

When he’s finished, he shuffles from the bedroom as he argues with his belt buckle and nearly headbutts Levi’s forehead with his chin. 

Despite not needing the assistance, Levi steadies him. “All right, brat?” 

“Shit,” Eren says, “I wasn’t paying attention.”

With a frown, Levi scrutinizes Eren, then shoos his hands away and fastens his buckle with a speed and finesse that leaves Eren in awe when he considers the early hour. “Good thing you don’t need your gear today. You’d tie yourself in a knot.”

Eren rubs his eyes. “Just tired.”

“How?” Levi raises a brow. “You slept like a log.

“Nevermind,” he adds when Eren stretches. “I made you Lapsang. You’ll need it to deal with four-eyes today.”

Levi feeds Eren buttered toast with blackberry jam. He fills him with three cups of tea, but when Eren retreats with the same leaden feet he does every morning, Levi stops him.

Usually, he says he’ll see Eren later. Always in a tone that leaves Eren confused as to whether it’s a statement or a question.

He never kisses Eren goodbye, nor squeezes his hand. Levi doesn’t say _I love you_. He holds the door open with a stoicism that makes Eren’s heart clench so hard he’s forced to avert his gaze to the floor.

Today though, Eren feels a hand on his shoulder. When he turns, Levi catches his eyes and strokes his thumb between Eren’s brow. The touch is so light; it’s like being caressed by a breeze. 

Eren smiles, and though it’s small, Levi smiles back. 

“See you tonight, brat.”

As always, Eren’s room is icy. Levi is one door away, and it takes Eren ten steps to get there. He’s counted. Whether he rushes from his room to Levi’s in the evening using all his willpower to go as slowly as possible or lumbers from where his heart feels most at home in the morning, the amount of strides doesn’t change.

He likes to sleep in when he can, but it’s too late to crawl into his Leviless bed. Whoever’s on kitchen duty today has probably opened the mess, but he’s already full. And he’s too wound up to try and read a book or even clean. 

Levi didn’t kiss him before he left, but he touched him. He can still feel the callus on the edge of his thumb, skimming his skin. 

It’s possible something changed, or maybe it’s because Eren was such a pain in the arse last night. Levi didn’t have his worry frown though. His expression wasn’t burdened but as subtle as his guises are, Eren felt an air of regret. Not as though Levi thought he did something wrong, but Eren would like to believe he didn’t want him to see him go. 

Maybe Eren should be a pain in the arse more often. At the thought, he brushes his hand over his backside as he moves to his little stove. There’s no pain. And other than what his imagination provides, there’s no remaining sensation. Not that he expected there would be. He heals, and even if he didn’t, Levi didn’t wallop him. He’s not even sure if he would define it as hitting. 

It’s nothing to complain about. Though, Eren still feels like a bothersome and unappreciative numbskull. 

As he lights the fire and fills his kettle, a curl of embarrassment tightens his stomach. Despite the heat on his face at the memory and the self-berating questioning, as when he first woke, the ache in his heart still weighs less. The surge pressing on his shoulders that’s ever attempting to thrust him through the ground has abated. And without forcing it, for once, while in his own quarters at six in the morning, Eren can feel himself smiling. 

Still, it wasn’t what he expected. He requested a beating from Levi of all people. Though it might be less so for him, that’s a dangerous proposition for anyone. He couldn’t think clearly the night before, but he expected his pants to be ripped away and Levi thoroughly smacking him. Eren thought Levi might take it out on him just for how frustrating he had been. Or to prove a point. While he lay there, he expected Levi would try to teach him a lesson. He thought as much as he’d grit his teeth and try to endure it, he’d crumble and beg Levi to stop after a handful of swats. 

It hadn’t hurt, though, and Levi had been so careful with him. He isn’t sure if it was Levi’s tenderness or how safely vulnerable he felt that unraveled him, but something had. Being powerless with Levi is the only time powerlessness has ever felt like a soothing blanket instead of as if his gear had snapped. Eren relishes the memory and wonders if it’s why giving away what little power he has was so comforting.

If he’s honest, he thinks while steeping his Assam, he’d like to do it again, if only to find out. 

As he sits at his kitchen table, hunched over his tea, searching for clarity in its sweet steam, his mind wanders back to afterward. 

Levi had been gingerly with him then too. Not that their sex is particularly rough, but it was slower, and Levi kissed him more than he had before. His embrace felt firmer yet softer too.

Eren scratches his nail across his lips. Levi whispered _mine_ against them, or at least Eren hopes he did. His heart had clenched at the declaration, and it was what in the end undid him. 

It’s almost, _I love you_ , Eren thinks. 

Actually, it might be better. 

The embracing lightness continues through Eren’s morning routine. He catches himself humming in the shower and raises his volume. His broad smile interferes when he shaves the few hairs that sprout from his chin, and despite the prospect, he won’t see Levi until evening, Eren doesn’t grouse about meeting Hanji. 

Powered by seven pieces of Levi’s impeccable toast, he detours toward the training grounds and forgoes the mess. 

When she finds him later, Mikasa will ask why he was a no-show, but with relief still infusing his blood and his chest full of flutters, he’ll grin too much as his mind wanders, and she’ll poke more about that than she will about a meal skipped. 

An excuse is already stowed in his arsenal: he slept late. 

His steps still feel like bouncing on a cloud when he finds Hanji in the forest clearing. He must be grinning again or seem odd because she jumps in place, her leer broadening at his approach. 

“You look …” she begins, sounding as though she might pull out her magnifying glass, “extra happy for once.”

Eren shrugs and tames his expression. “It’s nice out.”

It may be winter, but the birds are chirping as if it’s June, the sun is brilliant, and it’s one of those rare days the rays are intense enough one could leave their jacket home even if they didn’t burn with a perpetual fever. 

Hanji frowns and gives Eren’s bicep a sturdy slap. “You looked weird for the last few weeks. Like a broody teenager. It’s like it’s melted away with this cruddy snow.” She kicks a pile of slush.

“I slept good too.”

“Interesting,” she says as she taps her lips. “Good. We can go over that later, but for now, let’s see what you can do today.”

By now, without trouble, Eren can cover his fists in armor. But his feet are another matter. What forms, as always thus far, steams to nothing before he’s finished. It’s not enough to dampen his mood, but frustrating nonetheless. 

On the upside, today, he’s able to properly shift a second time, after—according to Hanji’s delighted screaming—only six minutes. 

Even more exciting to Hanji, Eren maintains his fifteen meters and is fully cognizant. 

It’s been a good round of practice, yet, as it does on most days, it leaves Eren exhausted and famished. Right now, he’d like to shift again and devour a house. Instead, he’s on his way to Hanji’s office. 

The door has barely closed behind him when Hanji drops into her chair and then shoves a tin of biscuits across the cleared path on her desk. 

“Eat those. You can have them all,” she says, “you’re about to faint.”

“You worry too much,” Eren says and stops himself from adding _like Levi_ , though he rips the lid from the tin and digs in. Hanji has never judged his voraciousness. 

Her office isn’t like Levi’s, he thinks as butter and chocolate melt in his mouth. Their relationship is different but other than Levi’s rooms and Eren’s own quarters, this is the only place where he can be himself without scrutinization. It’s true Hanji watches his vitals, she impales and prods his body and his psyche, but somehow, in this dusty space, he can unwind. 

She’s not like his mother. She’s not like a lover. Nor a typical superior. Hanji is his friend, though different from Armin and Mikasa. 

“Why aren’t you jabbing me with needles?” he asks, mouth full of cookies. 

“I really should,” she says, “you’re strange today too. Good strange, but strange. Who knows what I’ll find in your blood.”

Eren offers his arm. “The same that you always do.”

Usually, after training, they go to Hanji’s lab. She listens to his heart, draws blood, and revels in beating his knees with her little hammer to test his reflexes. Afterward, they relax in her office while Hanji shifts from poking his arm or spine to poking his brain. 

According to the military’s agreement, it’s to keep a close eye on his psychological and physical standing, yet Hanji’s professional air tends to drift to the concerned friend if he’s been having a hard time or the strain of shifting has joggled anything loose. 

Today, it hasn’t. 

“You don’t seem like you have a headache,” Hanji notes. 

“Not today.” Eren’s still starving, though, so he pushes another biscuit into his mouth. Hanji’s office is a disaster, but Eren’s mother didn’t raise him to be impolite, so he’s careful not to make too many crumbs and sets his handkerchief over his lap. 

Hanji rolls her eye. “You’re just as bad as Levi by now. Sweep them onto the floor for all I care.”

Eren swallows. “It’ll attract mice,” he says. “You know, I could help if you ever want to clean in here.”

“Hah!” She aims a finger in his direction. “Now you sound like Levi too. You’re just nicer about it.”

He laughs. He wouldn’t put it the same way as Hanji. It’s not that Levi isn’t kind, but he’s efficient and driven when he wants a job done. Eren’s not so different when he thinks about it. “You’re my superior,” he says. “You could write me up.”

“I’m Levi’s superior too.” For a moment, she looks mournful and lost as her eye flicks to the ceiling. “The stupidest idea Erwin ever had.”

“You make a good commander,” he says and licks crumbs from his fingers. “I don’t imagine Levi would like the job.”

“Hm.” Hanji begins doodling in her notebook. She focuses on shading a figure at the top of the page. It looks to be a tiny titan bent in a painfully unnatural position. “Keeping an eye on you gives Levi enough to do.”

“What’s that mean?” Eren frowns at the page when she adds what looks to be a third leg sprouting from the titan’s head.

“Nothing.”

She said it in that tone that makes him feel disrobed. It always leaves Eren unsure whether she’s referring to Levi still tasked with watching over him and destroying him if need be, or if she’s poking for something else. It doesn’t induce the same intrusive shiver as Mikasa’s remarks, but Hanji can be just as nosey and persistent in her own right. 

“I didn’t mean anything by it,” she says. “But speaking of Levi, what did you two do last night? You usually scrunch up your forehead after training. You aren’t today.”

“Oh.” Eren rubs between his brows. 

“Did you find an exciting new game to play? Maybe cards instead of boring old chess?”

Eren’s glad he wasn’t eating because he would have choked on butter biscuit at her first enquiry. It doesn’t matter that there’s no possibility she knows, he can feel his cheeks flame. “We don’t always play chess,” he says, and to justify the inordinate amount of evenings he spends in Levi’s quarters, he adds, “no one else around here is a challenge.” 

“Sounds boring either way.” Hanji shrugs. “Then again, _Boring_ is Levi’s middle name.”

Hanji and Levi are friends, and they tease and mock each other. They make quips and call each other names. It’s simply how they are, but Eren’s fingers tense into a ball. Levi’s not _boring_ , and he wants to argue, wants to defend him, but doing so will only result in more questions. It wouldn’t be covert. And if there is one agreement Eren and Levi made, it was to be covert. 

It happened right after their first kiss when Levi had paced and tried to apologize. Eren still remembers how his heart twisted when Levi whispered _sorry_ and that he would never do it again. He was so close, Eren could feel his breath on his lips.

After some pleading from Eren and angry tears that resulted in him stealing another of Levi’s handkerchiefs, Levi capitulated and explained they had to be covert and if he ever made Eren feel uncomfortable to kick him in the balls. 

Eren chews his cheek. They’ve come so far since that evening only a few short months ago. Now, it feels like he and Levi have been tied together for years. 

“Whatcha thinking about?” Hanji asks, waving her hand before his face. “You’re not having memories, are you?”

Eren shakes his head. “No,” he says, “was just daydreaming.”

“Wonderful,” Hanji says. “When was the last time they bothered you?”

“Um …” Eren scratches his head. “Last night, I fell asleep in the chair. Same shit as usual, but they went away when I got in bed. Didn’t have any the rest of the night.” 

Hanji raises the brow over her missing eye. “You mean the chair at Levi’s?”

“Yeah,” he says and clears his throat. “That one. I didn’t mean to.”

“I’m sure Levi didn’t care,” she says. “I should get some observations from him. Any yelling and screaming? Biting?”

“Don’t know,” Eren says. “I didn’t ask him. I don’t think I bit though.”

Abandoning her tiny titan doodle, she scratches something down in her notebook. Eren doesn’t need to read _EREN_ in big black capital letters on the page to know it’s about him. 

“Good,” she says, nodding and scribbling. When she flips a few pages, Eren’s sure he spies a big capital _L_. She scribbles something there too, and Eren wonders if she keeps notes on everyone or it’s only him. If he’s honest, he would feel more normal if it was everybody. But the converse also begs the question of what the hell she’s writing. 

He pinches the bridge of his nose. Merely the prospect of attempting to figure out how Hanji’s mind works gives him the beginnings of a headache. 

“My throat was dry. Scratchy,” he says at last. “I was sweaty. My palms were steaming. Nothing more. I had to have been making a fist.”

“Combat hysteria,” she says. “We all get it.” Her smile is sympathetic when her eye meets his. “You’re a bit more of a concern. Wouldn’t want you to shift in your sleep, and you do have those fits too.”

If Hanji wasn’t his commander or Eren wouldn’t come off like an angry child, he might growl. “It only happened once.”

It was embarrassing enough. Hanji, Armin, and Levi were all there to catch him confused and talking to himself. Mikasa heard him too. 

Later that night, he woke up, biting himself, and then couldn’t stop. Eren doesn’t know if it’s from what he discovered of his father’s memories before they let him out of jail or if it was from the future he witnessed saw when he kissed Historia’s hand. 

Regardless of the trigger, he was too loud or too quiet because Levi kicked open his door and found him with his fist in his mouth. It was like waking from a dream. Levi fetched Hanji when Eren was cleaned up, and she ordered Levi to stay in Eren’s quarters the rest of the night. 

Levi told Hanji to fuck off, and they’d stay in his because he had two rooms. Not that it made a difference. 

It was the first night he and Levi kissed. 

“I know I’ve told you before, but if it happens again, I want you to tell me right away.”

“All right, all right,” Eren says. He’s grateful she didn’t add to tell her what he saw. He still hasn’t told anyone about his visions in the fleeting moment of contact with Historia. 

Not even Levi.


	5. Chapter Four: Cordolium

It’s a lazy Friday evening. Eren lies in Levi’s bed, head resting on his chest, their fingers entwined. 

He breathes through a smile when Levi kisses the top of his head. Though there’s much preparation to be completed for the ocean expedition and aiding Shiganshina for resettlement, mid-winter has brought reprieve, and sometimes within it, life nearly feels normal.

Currently, they have relaxing weekends, as in, Hanji forbids Eren from training and orders him to recuperate, and with the turbulent weather, he has two days of unhindered freedom to look forward to. 

Levi will take the extra time for cleaning and dusting, and he’ll probably insist they spend Sunday afternoon sharpening knives, but if Eren doesn’t grouse, he might take him to Everard’s shop too. 

Levi combs his fingers through Eren’s hair. “This is getting long,” he says, brushing another kiss to the crown of his head.

“Should I cut it?”

“No,” Levi says. “Makes you easier to grab when you brawl with Jean, and I have to toss you two morons around.”

Eren groans into Levi’s chest. At least Jean will still have his bruises tomorrow. “Too much ale,” he says, “sometimes we’re idiots. Sorry.”

“You two are always idiots. Always setting each other off,” Levi says. “You never told me what started it.”

“Would it have kept you from kicking my arse?”

“No,” Levi says. He pinches Eren’s hip hard enough to make him hiss. “No fights in the dining hall.”

“But …” Eren huffs instead of mumbling _whatever, Captain_. “He called me a butthead.”

He can almost hear Levi roll his eyes before he says, “You should have stabbed him.”

“Shut up.” Eren gives him a shove. “He said I’m stupid and never think anything through. Ever. And he said I’m a blockhead too. Can you believe that?”

“Are you?” Levi asks.

“No!” He lifts his head, yet when he sees Levi’s faint smirk, he resettles. He’s behaving childishly. “Sometimes, I am, but not how he means.”

“Yes,” says Levi, “your head is rather round.”

“What an arsehole,” Eren grumbles. “Stupid smarty-pants.”

“Idiot-pants,” Levi says, knuckles brushing Eren’s shoulder. “But you thought breaking his nose was a novel idea? He squealed like a pigling when I reset it.”

“I didn’t … not at first,” Eren says. “I only threw a potato at his ugly face.”

Levi clicks his tongue. “A good choice of weapon.”

“It was better than a bottle. And Jean started it anyway.”

“He always does,” Levi says, “and you fall for it.”

If Eren were a little older—if he and Levi had been together longer, he might bite him. But he hides his face instead. “Can we not talk about that arsehole here? We’re practically naked.”

Kissing Eren’s head again, Levi holds him closer and snorts. It’s funny, but it’s not. They didn’t have sex, but they’re both in their drawers under Levi’s heavy quilts, supposedly to fall asleep. Eren can still feel the evening’s beer in his veins, and if he’s going to make a fuss about fighting with Jean, he’d prefer to be standing while wearing his slacks.

“Stop pouting,” Levi says. “We can talk about whatever you want here.”

It catches Eren off guard. Enough he lifts his head and narrows his eyes in the lantern’s dim shine. 

“Anything?” Eren asks. 

Levi frowns, and although he looks as though he might want to take the offer back, he doesn’t. “That’s what I said.”

Eren puts his head back down. There’s something he’s been thinking about for the last couple of weeks. It’s crept up on him in the shower and during training too. He sees a flash of a flowered quilt when he’s standing in the meal queue. He ponders it when his eyes lock on Levi’s hands during chess, and he can’t pull his gaze away. 

The problem is, he doesn’t know how to broach the subject. The night when he’d asked Levi to punish him, he’d simply blurted it out, but he hasn’t felt so pained and haunted since. And sarcastic as it was, it was Levi’s idea. Sort of. 

He toys with the fine hairs encircling Levi’s right nipple. His voice is stuck in his throat or perhaps his stomach, but he squeaks out an embarrassing sound that’s close to a word. 

“What was that?” Levi doesn’t mock him but tucks his hair behind his ear. It’s getting shaggy enough to hide behind, and Eren wishes Levi hadn’t taken away his shroud of cowardice. 

“Um …” Eren closes his eyes. It’s an illogical and futile attempt not to be seen. As though if he can’t see Levi, Levi won’t see him. He gulps, trying to rid himself of the beating in his gullet. His Adam’s apple feels like it’s pulsing. 

“Levi,” Eren begins, “remember when we did that thing?” He doesn’t wait for an answer. If he doesn’t force the question now, he’ll be unable to continue. “Can we try it again?”

“Which thing?” Levi asks. He sounds curious, and maybe a touch amused at Eren’s fidgeting. “We’ve done a few things.”

Eren holds in a groan. This is so complicated. Levi probably thinks he’s talking about him using his mouth. He’s been trying that lately. Not that he’s good at it yet. 

Levi is restrained and doesn’t complain. But during Eren’s blundering attempts at giving pleasure, he’s always too impatient. He chokes and gags. He drools. It makes his cheeks and jaw hurt. Sometimes he uses too much teeth, then Levi has to gently grip his hair and pull him back while urging him to slow down.

Though, it’s not what Eren wants right now. He can’t even think of penises. Whether it be Levi’s or his own. 

“That night a couple weeks ago,” Eren says, feeling the words on the precipice of tumbling. “When I got mad. When I had that dream. The thing you did afterward.”

Levi exhales so hard, it ruffles Eren’s fringe. “When I spanked you?”

“Ugh …” Eren resists covering his ears. Levi said it. He fucking said it! But instead of yelling not to, he takes a breath. “Yeah … that …”

He wants to look at Levi, but he can’t. Not even when his hand slinks up to cradle Eren’s jaw and press his face harder to his chest. 

His arm wraps tighter around Eren. “Depends,” Levi says.

“Why?” 

“This doesn’t have anything to do with me dragging you out of the mess by your collar?”

Eren shakes his head. “No! No, it’s not that.”

“All right,” Levi says. “I’m not refusing, but what’s the matter? You got upset the other time.”

No, no, no. Levi didn’t upset him. “You didn’t—” He stops himself, trying to find a way to explain something he can’t yet figure out. “I’m just stressed. And you didn’t make me upset. I felt better after, and you don’t have to if you don’t want to … I should just shut up.”

He indeed cried in the aftermath, and Eren would have bawled into Levi’s bed if he hadn’t stopped. But as much as Eren’s misery burned his chest, it was like Levi rained on him and overflowed his banks. And once the flood was gone, Eren was purged of all the painful rubbish floating around his head. 

Though Eren resists, Levi tips his chin up and makes him meet his gaze. Eren could keep his eyes closed, but it’s not going to get him what he wants. And as difficult as it is, he forces his eyelids open. 

“I’m not punishing you for your row with Jean? Or for having to kick you around?”

“No.” Eren chews the corner of his mouth. “Jean pissed me off, but it’s not why. I had a bad day. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s wrong. I don’t know why.”

Levi nods. He rubs his thumb between Eren’s brows. “Then pretend it’s for doing a shit job sweeping the corners in the meeting room today.”

“I didn’t miss the—”

“You sure as fuck did.” 

Other than the fact Eren is in only his drawers this time, the mechanics are the same. Levi rubs his back and neck while practically patting his arse. 

Although there’s a part of Eren that wants to tell Levi he can hit him harder, or if he’s honest, actually _hit_ him, he relaxes over Levi’s lap until he feels like butter. His mind wanders somewhere else, and all he feels is Levi touching him while his tension unwinds. It’s similar to when Hanji had to give him poppy extract. But better.

He doesn’t cry when it’s over, and it doesn’t feel as though Levi stops out of fret. Eren’s not sure, but he thinks it ends when he groans a groan that sounds like a snore. 

After Levi strokes his arse and kisses his shoulder, Eren crawls off his thighs and under the covers. He’s not sure why, but he needs to be the little spoon, so he wordlessly gives Levi his back. 

“Better?” Levi asks as he molds himself to Eren and wraps his arm around his waist. 

“Yeah. Thanks.” He kisses Levi’s hand. 

“Good,” Levi says. “Next time, sweep the corners.”

Eren’s definitely better. He feels like he can sleep. He doesn’t fear his dreams, and Levi’s mattress has never felt so fluffy. But when he replays it, there’s a dogged question that pokes at him. The slight intoxication eases his apprehension, but the prospect of bringing it up scratches at him more deeply than asking did in the first place. 

“Hey, Levi …” Eren says. He remembers himself and shutters the lantern not far from his face. If he’s going to voice a stranger want than he already did tonight, he needs it dark. 

“You sure you’re okay?” Levi asks. His fingertips swipe over Eren’s cheek as if searching for tears. 

“Mmhm.” Eren takes Levi’s hand as it retreats. He needs something to hold on to. “Will we do that again?”

“For the right reasons,” Levi mumbles against his neck. 

Eren nods. “Okay …” He wants to pull the covers over his head. There’s no way he’d be able to say this if he were the big spoon and not still heady or if the hearth fire was blazing. “What if I wanted to tell you to stop?”

“Then tell me to stop,” Levi says. “I’ll stop.”

“No, I mean … fuck …” The sheets are tangled so tightly around his fingers they’re tingling. “What if I didn’t—what if I wanted to say it, but …” 

He chokes on the thought.

“But?” Levi asks as he shifts to look at him through the dim.

Eren covers his face. “What if I want to tell you to stop, but—shit … I don’t—I don’t really want you to?”

He pulls the pillow over his face. It’s mortifying he even asked. 

“Oh …” Levi stills for a breath before he tugs the pillow away. He squeezes his arm. “Pretending you don’t want it?”

Eren’s not sure if it’s precisely that. He has no idea what it is, but this time, there were moments when there was an urge to fight, to say no regardless that he wanted Levi to keep going. “What the hell is wrong with me?”

“Nothing,” Levi says, and Eren feels him shrug around him though he sounds sleepy. “Use a gesture or a codeword or something.”

That was simple enough. Levi’s not judging him, and although Eren knows Levi loves him, he expected it to be more challenging. He thought Levi would flick his ear and tell him to get his shit together. 

“A codeword?”

“Like we use in communications when they’re bullshit.”

Eren bites his lip and thinks. He conjures visions that make his chest warm and remind him of Levi. It only takes a few heartbeats of consideration before—without much thought—he sputters, “blackberry humbugs.”

“Might be a touch long,” Levi says, hugging Eren tighter, leaving him feeling so safe and loved. 

“Then just … blackberry?”

“Quicker, yes. Fewer syllables.”

Though he doesn’t release Eren, Levi’s hand sneaks up to tuck the bedclothes snugger. 

He kisses Eren below his ear. “Blackberry, it is.”

* * *

Over the next couple of months, Eren doesn’t end up using the word. And though what he still only openly refers to as _that thing_ happens just a few more times, he doesn’t tell Levi to stop either. 

In the end, _blackberry_ and all it could entail remains an idea still stuffed away in the back of Eren’s mind.

Not that he’s critical of Levi’s approach, but if the spankings actually stung, he might be inclined to protest or find himself forced to use the codeword.

He hates to admit it. To criticize. To ask for anything else, but he finds himself wishing more often that it hurt. Really hurt. 

Eren’s been practicing delaying his healing. An ability he doesn’t think he’ll need, yet Hanji’s been insistent. She’s unaware, but he tests it with the scratches Levi leaves on his back and the lovebites on his stomach and thighs. 

There’s a suffusing heat at the thought, but if Levi truly unleashed on him, he’d practice with that remaining pain too.

“You’re up early,” Levi says close to his ear.

He hasn’t moved. He hasn’t blinked or twitched, and yet Levi knows he’s awake.

“It’s going to be a long day.”

“I have Silver Needle,” Levi says. “For the evening.”

Eren is sixteen years old today, and the recollection and promise of Silver Needle’s taste is more glorious than any of the other celebratory nonsense he’ll endure in the coming hours. 

It’s his first birthday since they discovered the lifespan, and though she tried to feign excitement, Mikasa’s eyes already looked tired and droopy yesterday. Jean, Connie, and Sasha were astoundingly quiet, and Armin seemed lost in thought. 

Eren doesn’t need their pity or their forced smiles. In fact, the weight of their poorly concealed grief is more burdensome than anything he feels for himself. 

Hanji, on the other hand, promised him a gift the night before. Implying he ought to leave room in his stomach and not mock her efforts. 

Levi has been and simply is, Levi. Quiet with an attention Eren can sense. Not overbearing, but he’s awake and watching, and Eren can feel his silent sorrow in the stare directed at his back. A soft brush of mournfulness. 

They’ve all seen death, but Levi has a well-forged yet organic acceptance where the others rail in their rue and disbelief. If Eren was asked to describe it, he’d say Levi would instead seize their time than waste it lamenting. 

It’s the only despair that doesn’t make Eren want to flee. 

He presses his thumb into the center of Levi’s palm. “Silver Needle tonight?”

“Don’t start feeling too important,” Levi says, placing a kiss on Eren’s nape. “Everard was desperate. I made him include it.”

Eren snickers. He would have liked to see Levi haggle this time. “How long did that take?”

“An hour,” says Levi, “but the negotiations were worth the prize.”

“I might buy apple cake today,” Eren says. His mother used to make it on his birthday, and it’s an excellent excuse to avoid half his lunch break. “That’s okay with you?”

“An entire cake?”

“Two slices.”

Levi sends Eren off to sneak from his quarters like he does every morning he wakes there—tea-infused, rumbling belly quelled, and with a touch between his brows. This time, Eren thought he might receive a kiss, but that day has yet to come. 

He slithers into his room and shuffles to the washroom. His limbs are fatigued. And as he washes and dresses, he tries to ignore the feeling he’s moving through honey or marmalade.

This day shouldn’t be unusual—important— _special_. It hasn’t been since he was a child of ten. It shouldn’t drag at his bones as it does either. Eren’s no longer used to having his favorite meal or a lovingly homely apple cake. The memory of his mother singing to him in the morning has faded, and he can’t recall the last gift he received before his world dissolved. 

After Wall Maria’s fall—in the encampment, they didn’t have a calendar to mark the day, and though Armin tried to keep track, even he couldn’t pinpoint their birthdays with surety. 

Their three years in training weren’t characterized by more than teenage bravado and claps on the back about the further adventure into adulthood. Among those of them who are left, that attitude still persists, mostly. 

At fifteen, Eren didn’t do more than stare in the mirror for an extra few moments, searching for something different that he never found.

As he repeats the ritual this year, he notes he’s taller, and his hair now brushes his chin and trails his nape. He’s also sprouted a few new sparse whiskers above his lip.

Other than that, not much about Eren has changed. At least not in appearance. 

It’s too early to deal with Mikasa, so he bypasses a quick extra bite in the raucous mess hall and heads to the meeting room. Before he steps inside, he can already hear Levi scolding Hanji about something he doesn’t catch. The conversation drops away when he opens the door. 

Inside, Levi leans against a desk, seemingly bored and irritated. Hanji’s pacing, tugging her fringe straight up, and Armin hovers patiently over a map, pencil poised against a ruler, marking an overly precise angle. 

Eren rolls his eyes. No rivers in nature have bends that perfectly sharp. 

“You weren’t at breakfast,” Armin says as if Eren didn’t know this. 

“I bet the Commander didn’t go to the mess either.” 

“You shouldn’t do this on an empty stomach.”

Eren’s jaw flexes. “It’s not empty. I have a stove, you know.”

“Okay.”Armin shrugs, scrutinizing Eren before he refocuses on the map. “Let’s get to work then.”

They’ve been at this since the basement. Cobbling together a more accurate representation of the land beyond Wall Maria based on Erwin’s journals and Eren’s access to Grisha’s memories. 

Other than Hanji, Levi, and Shadis, no one who’s ever traveled outside the walls still lives. When they first embarked on this task, Shadis was little help, unable to offer more than confirmation of landmarks they already knew. 

He was also needed for training new recruits, so it’s been left to the four of them. Though Armin’s had trouble accessing any decipherable memories from Bertholdt. 

“What am I looking for today?” Eren asks. 

“Try to find that river again,” Levi says. “The one that goes to the cliffs.”

As usual, Eren sits, having a tendency to lose his balance if he stands. 

“Go slow,” says Hanji. “I’ll be writing everything down. We can sort it later.”

“Don’t worry about getting it wrong.” Levi perches on the table beside him. “Remember to breathe through it and then clear your head.”

At first, Eren was skeptical he could learn Levi’s meditation exercises. Not that Levi was a poor instructor, or they didn’t work, but Eren wasn’t sure he could keep from being overwhelmed by the haze. 

“Deep breath,” Levi says.

Eren hasn’t touched on becoming the master Levi is but follows his instructions.

“Close your eyes.”

Eren does as told.

Levi’s voice is a steady whisper beside his ear. “Find your center.”

Eren nods and envisions water dripping onto the surface of a lake. It falls from a bright red autumn maple leaf. He watches droplets slip from its tip. He hears their _plink-plink-plink_ and concentrates on each concentric ripple rising and expanding before it dies. He clears his head of all but the image and slows his breathing. 

“Relaxed?” Hanji asks.

“Yes.”

Levi touches his shoulder. “Count back from ten.”

As Eren counts aloud, he sinks into memories that aren’t his own. Sensations he’s never himself felt raise the hair on his skin, desperate determination settles in his chest. Rage permeates his bones. He’s experienced that inferno as Eren, but the potency of Grisha’s fury is a tempest. 

Eren stands atop the port’s wall, surveying the carnage. He is alone. No shred of Kruger remains. Everyone’s dead.

His regrown fingers flex. 

He’s seen this before, the broken ships, the broken bodies. The waves thrash the shore behind him. He has to find a way inside the walls. 

It’s easy to be overcome by the memories. To un-become Eren and to become Grisha. But he resists and fights the welter. He has to find the winding river close to the sea. 

The wind gusts and the recollections threaten to tug Eren in so profoundly, he would marvel at it all. The shock of how quiet the island is. How fresh it smells. Nothing like the constant din and grit of the squalid Interment Zone. 

He frets for Zeke, but for now, he’s beyond his aid. Dina is gone. And likely already mindlessly searching for their kinfolk and salvation, the rest of his newly turned compatriot’s pounding footfalls don’t even shake the land. All that’s left in the sand are footprints as large as men, severed limbs, and shreds of cloth.

He taps his toe against a bloody shoe.

_Make a family,_ he hears Kruger say.

Eren shakes his head and pushes onward. The last time he was here, he saw a small forest near an abandoned castle. He smelled fresh water close to it. 

Time passes strangely when he searches, trudging through sand and brush weeds, already tiring when the terrain morphs into soft grass. Sticking close to the woods, he drinks at watering holes and, to regain his breath for mere moments, leans against the trunks of trees, but he does not rest. With his father’s feet, Eren keeps moving and moving. 

He can’t hear himself speaking to Hanji, Armin, or Levi, but as the burning sun rises, his own voice rings from inside his father’s head.

_Dad, keep moving forward._

He sees a river, sparkling as the morning clouds part. He realizes he must be coming out of it when he hears Hanji ask, “You’ve found it?” 

She sounds like she’s in a tunnel.

This is different than when he experiences the memories through his nightmares. He feels numb and yet more drained. And by the time Levi squeezes Eren’s shoulder and tells him to get his head out of that garbage, he wouldn’t know if hours had passed or just minutes. In the memories, it’s been days and days. 

The room’s too bright when Eren opens his eyes, so he pinches them shut. His temples throb, his stomach churns, and his equilibrium feels like it plummeted through the planks beneath his feet. 

“He looks like he’s going to be sick,” Levi says, then there’s the sound of water being poured from a pitcher. 

“Eren,” Armin’s voice comes from beside him as he nudges a glass against his hand. “Drink this.”

“I’ll pull the shutters.” He hears Hanji somewhere in the distance. 

“This is too much for him, four-eyes,” Levi says. “He’s not going to be any help if you make him break his head.”

Eren blinks. The room is blessedly dark. His eyes burn. “I’m okay.” It’s not Hanji’s fault it takes so much out of him. 

“We’re so close, Levi.”

Eren can tell Levi’s pissed when he clicks his tongue and glares at Armin. “Filling out these shitty maps helps, but you got any memories, blondie? It’s been months.”

“Not really,” Armin says. He rubs his head. “It’s fuzzy. I don’t see things like Eren does. I feel emotions from Bertholdt. I see flashes. Things that left an impression, but that’s about it.”

“It’s because Eren inherited his titan from his father,” Hanji says. “At least according to what little we have from his books.”

“I already know that,” Levi says and waves his hand toward Armin. “Doesn’t mean this kid won’t remember something eventually.”

Hanji plants her hands on either side of the map. “We don’t have time for eventually. The people across the sea are going to come here one way or another.”

“And Eren will be useless if he ends up retarded.” 

“Not much longer,” Hanji says. “We’re so close.” She scans her notes. “Based on what Eren confirmed today, this river isn’t too far from the old supply depot. And if we search south for fauna you find by rivers and small forests, we’ll know we’re going in the right direction. Besides,” she says, grinning, “if I’m right, the titans outside the walls are all dead.”

“I know it’s south,” Eren says, taking a breath. How his head is pounding. “From what I can remember of the sun’s position, southeast.”

“Water runs downhill,” says Armin. 

“No shit,” Levi says. 

“What I mean to say is the river should run to the ocean,” Armin says. “But we need to know if it takes us to the right place.”

Levi looks at Hanji. He’s not the Commander, but sometimes Eren wonders if Levi holds sway over her regardless she’s his superior. “Finish the maps, but we can play it by our fucking ears.” 

“Eren might be able to direct us once we’re beyond the walls,” Armin says. 

“I’ll try,” Eren says. He rubs his head. Fresh air would do him good right now. Food too, but his stomach is still twisting. The nightmares will come again tonight. He should probably sleep in his own bed. “Might help if I saw it myself.”

Hanji taps her pencil so fast it blurs. “We can’t do surveys for the expedition. Zackley will never allow it.” 

“Fuck Zackley,” says Levi. “We’ll just have to make sure we find that fucking wall.”

“We can’t fuck up,” Hanji says before she narrows her eyes at Levi. “I don’t want to run Eren into the ground. I don’t. We’ll see how far we can get without these sessions, but I’ll need one more before we go. There’s no getting around it.”

“Can you handle it?” Armin asks Eren. 

“I can keep pushing.” He has to keep moving forward. The unbidden mantra is excruciating. He closes his eyes. He can feel steam in his nostrils. 

Somewhere through the crackling in his ears, he hears Levi growl. Then there’s something soft pressed to his nose. 

“You’re bleeding,” Levi says, hand cradling the back of Eren’s neck. “Put your big damn head back.”

“Eren?” Armin asks.

“Bring him to the infirmary,” Hanji says before everything fades. 

When Eren awakens, he wiggles his toes before he stretches his senses. 

His boots are off. His jacket is gone. He isn’t wearing his gear. The sheets are scratchy against his bare skin.

He smooths his palms over the shitty military issue blanket and sniffs. This isn’t his bed. It isn’t Levi’s either. The air smells of medicine, and as he inhales more deeply, he catches the scent of astringent too. 

Groaning, he runs a hand down his face. He’s in the fucking infirmary. From what he recalls, there was blood on his lip. Hanji sounded so far away. Armin too. He tried to focus on Levi’s eyes before he couldn’t keep his own open anymore. It’s the last thing he remembers before nothing. Eren growls at himself. Levi must have carried him. How embarrassing.

“I just took your blood,” Hanji says. “You’re not green anymore. How are you feeling?”

“I don’t know,” Eren says. He blinks and tries to focus on the table beside Hanji. It looks to be lined with medical instruments. He rubs his brow. “My head doesn’t hurt.”

“I gave you an injection to kill the pain,” Hanji says. “You’re not running a fever, well, any higher than normal, that is. I suspect it was just a migraine.”

Eren’s stomach grumbles. “I’m hungry,” he says as he tries to sit.

“Give yourself a fucking minute.” There’s a hand on his chest. Small yet forceful before it retreats.

Through the blur, Eren sees Levi recline against the wall, his foot tapping. Arms crossed. 

“Want some soup?” Hanji asks. 

What Eren wants is his apple cake and Silver Needle. He wants to not be shackled to the infirmary. It’s been months since he last passed out. Worst of all, why’d it had to happen today? News indeed has spread, and now his plot for avoidance has been destroyed. Mikasa and Armin are probably camping outside the door. 

“Did I miss lunch?” he asks.

He sees the flash of Hanji’s pocket watch. Hears it’s snap. “By a few hours.”

“Why don’t you give him the rest of the day to get his head on straight?” Levi says. He sounds dangerous. He looks scary too. His sleeves are rolled to his elbows. Eren doesn’t know where his cravat has gone, but he can see his pectorals flex through his shirt. 

“I’m not a slave driver,” she says with a scoff. “He can have the day. I just want to make sure he isn’t going to retch as soon as he stands up.” Eren’s vision isn’t clear, but Hanji’s lips twist into what looks like a smirk. “After I clear him to leave, you can take Eren-duty and watch him for the remainder of the day. I know you have good little eyes.”

Levi’s jaw tightens. “You can watch me as I throw you over the rampart.” 

“I’ll take you with me.”

Their quips are making Eren’s stomach grate. “Soup!” he yells.

“Oh, sorry.” Hanji pats his leg. “Give me a moment,” she says before she stands and leaves. 

“What happened?” Eren asks Levi once Hanji is gone.

“Nose started bleeding, you got dizzy, and then passed out. I carried you.”

“Ugh. I knew it.” That must have been a sight. “Did anyone see?” 

“Other than Armin and Hanji? No,” Levi says, “but blondie went to get Mikasa. I imagine they missed lunch too.”

“Did you eat?” Eren asks.

“No.”

Eren sits up. He’s in only his skivvies. He wants his trousers and shirt. His socks can wait. “Why do I always wake up here nearly naked?”

Levi shrugs. “Clothes get in the way of Hanji poking you,” he says and hands Eren his neatly folded uniform. 

It looks almost too pristine to disturb. Running his hand down the shirt made into a precise rectangle, Eren wishes he and Levi were in either of their quarters so he could wordlessly plead for an embrace. 

“Get your shit together and get dressed,” Levi says, snapping his fingers before Eren’s face, “before she gets back and decides to use you as a pincushion.”


	6. Chapter Five: Dies Natalis

Eren only makes it through the first half of his meal with a spoon before he gulps chicken soup the same way Hanji drinks coffee. And the second bowl goes down swiftly and without a moment to savor, much like their shitty military issue field tea. 

“Better?” Hanji asks him.

Eren nods and uncharacteristically wipes his mouth with the back of his sleeve. Levi fends off a flick to his ear. He’s glad to see Eren’s complexion’s improved, and the shadows beneath his eyes have dulled. Still, he looks like he’s been scraped off a shoe.

He nudges Eren’s foot hanging over the bed. “How’s your stomach?”

“Not going to puke if that’s what you mean.”

“Dizziness?” Hanji asks. 

Eren shakes his head. By Levi’s judgment, he appears good enough to leave and hanging about in the infirmary any longer with him and Hanji while Mikasa and Armin pace outside will raise Eren’s agitation. Based on the repeated flexing and balling of his fingers, it already has.

“I don’t see why you can’t go then,” says Hanji. “But I want you to take it easy the remainder of the day. Have someone fetch dinner later, or maybe Levi would be generous enough to cook for you.”

“What’s in the mess tonight?” Eren asks.

“Winter vegetable stew,” Hanji tells him, and Levi can imagine the _fuck that_ along with an internal gagging noise just by his expression. 

Levi pushes off from the wall. “I’ll feed him.”

“Terrific,” Hanji says. “I left something special in your quarters too.”

“Mine?” Eren asks.

“Yep! Right on your kitchen table. It’s just for today.

“I had my fill getting it all ready for you yesterday. You and Levi can share it.” She looks to Levi and raises her hands. “And no worries. I cooked it in the kitchen. It was clean, and I didn’t lick my fingers then stick them back in the bowl.”

“Thank the world for small favors,” he says. Levi will have to examine this culinary masterpiece before he determines whether he’ll partake or not. Besides, Eren was after apple cake this morning, and there’s no way a few hours of unconsciousness and a now resolved headache are going to deter him from his mission for treasured sweets. 

“Thank you, Hanji,” Eren says.

“You’re welcome,” Hanji says. “Don’t suppose I could convince you to take a nap?” 

Levi would prefer it as well. Eren still looks faded. It doesn’t make sense, but if Levi didn’t know better, he’d say Eren lost a few pounds since this morning. He’ll have to keep a close eye on him. At worst, Eren has another episode, and he’s fetching Hanji or carrying him back here for a second time today. 

“Unless you order it,” Eren says, “no.” He puts on his socks, laces up his boots, and cracks his neck. 

“Stick with Levi. Get your cake and no dawdling.”

“Levi and I don’t dawdle.” 

Hanji snorts. “I find that hard to believe.”

“You’re hard to believe.”

There’s a knock at the door, and Levi can see Eren’s irritation before Hanji has opened it. 

She looks back at him, hand fastened on the knob. “They’ve been waiting.”

Eren sighs. “Let them in.”

He stands, and Levi surmises it’s to let Armin and Mikasa know not to get comfortable. That they won’t be spending the afternoon entertaining him while he’s stuck in the infirmary. 

Mikasa doesn’t say anything other than Eren’s name before she clamps onto him as though he’d just survived near death. 

“How are you feeling?” she asks, hand tight in his hair. “You should be back in bed.”

“I’m all right.”

Eren seems to shrink in on himself, and Levi keeps a satisfied smirk at bay. No, he doesn’t relish Eren’s discomfort, but Mikasa's tenor is irksome as she scratches at his nape and fondles the wispy strands there—a blatant yet simultaneously restrained possessiveness in her fingers’ caress. 

How easy it would be to snap those delicate bones.

Though Levi’s yet to fully decipher her neurotic fixation on Eren, she’s either in love with him or devoted herself for some reason that runs just as deep. She trails him like a sitter of children, argues during attempts to emotionally manipulate him like an overbearing lover, and when all else fails, capitulates to Eren’s whims like a smitten adolescent.

Levi doesn’t believe in the Ackerman liege theory. He’s never had one, but from his brief discussion with Mikasa on the Ackerman nature, and Eren’s description of the stabbing incident when they were children, Levi considers Mikasa may very well believe she has a liege in Eren. Even if the notion is fantasy.

“Mikasa,” Eren says. “I said I’m all right. It’s okay.” 

“I know, but you should rest.”

“Good idea. But Eren doesn’t need bed rest,” Hanji says. “I gave him the day off, and Levi will keep watch over him.”

Mikasa peers at Levi over Eren’s shoulder with an accusatory squint. As if this is somehow his fault. Or perhaps it’s her suspicions. Then again, maybe her passive venomousness comes from the knowledge it’s Levi’s task to kill Eren were he to lose control. 

She doesn’t like Levi either way. And he supposes he can’t blame her. What is there to like? He’s a bastard and a cutthroat and the son of a whore. He can kill a titan or a human, but smiles and kind words halt somewhere in his midriff. If they even form.

“You look much better,” Armin says to Eren. His hands are stuffed in his pockets, and he rocks on his heels near the safety of the exit. 

Levi imagines Mikasa’s spent the last three hours interrogating him as she paced, cursing Eren was beyond her reach. Armin looks exhausted compared to when Levi brought Eren here. He’s got less than thirteen years, and she’s probably sucked out at least a month over the afternoon.

“I _am_ better.” Eren squirms from Mikasa’s grip. 

One of her hands smooths Eren’s cheek, the other, that red scarf that never leaves her neck.

“What happened?” she asks as Eren takes a step back. 

“I already told you,” Armin says.

Levi shakes his head. “He had a headache.”

“A migraine from the regression,” Hanji interjects. “It’s nothing too concerning.”

“ _Too,_ ” Mikasa mimics. “Just because he heals doesn’t mean he doesn’t hurt. You said he was unconscious.”

“I was,” Eren says. “Now I’m not.”

“What if he doesn’t wake up next time?”

“There won’t be a next time,” Levi says. “I already put a stop to it.”

If Mikasa could kill with a mere expression, she would. And Levi imagines it would give her wonderous satisfaction. “You …?” she asks.

Hanji lifts her finger. “I said one more time to confirm.”

“Fuck your one more time.” 

“There’s still my report for Zackley.”

Eren rubs his head. He pulls at his hair. 

“What are you two doing to him?” Mikasa says.

“Come again?” says Hanji. Levi’s rarely seen her look offended or Commanderly, but she seems both right now. “We’re soldiers. We’re the Survey Corps. We have a mission.”

“Shut up for a minute!” Eren stomps. “They didn’t do anything to me. Fuck.”

Hanji reaches for Eren’s arm. “Can I check your ears? They look red. It will only take a minute.”

As if coming from a fog, he blinks and blinks again. “Sure. Okay.”

“But …” Mikasa starts.

Armin touches her arm. Like that would stop her. “Hanji takes good care of Eren.”

Mikasa’s immediate response is to glare at Levi again. 

How very Ackerman of her, he thinks.

He waits until Eren and Hanji are on the other side of the door. He doesn’t retrieve his pocket knife, but he’d like to. He knows she loves Eren in one way or another. He loves Eren too, and even if he didn’t, he would still think her overbearing attachment doesn’t do Eren good. 

He cocks his head. “I bet a lot of the boys like you, Mikasa.”

“No,” Armin says, “they’re mostly scared of her.”

“Can’t imagine why.”

“Well, you see,” Armin begins, “she’s stronger than everyone but you, and that can be intimidating.”

“Mm.” Levi picks at his cuticle and flashes a nasty grin. “Intimidating, you say?”

Mikasa is almost as red as her scarf, though she does nothing but glower with that rapier edged contempt that makes the room feel like it’s crackling. 

“Jean isn’t so afraid of her.”

“Oh? I’m sure he’d enjoy the attention.”

Armin nods. “He does seem to fancy you, Mikasa.”

“He’s a man-child,” she hisses.

These are Eren’s friends from childhood. The only people close to a family he has left. He cherishes them, and it would behoove Levi not to tell Mikasa that she’s a domineering mother hen, nor Armin that he has a unique talent for stating what’s painfully evident while altogether missing the point. Still, Eren wants to buy cake, and Levi intends to do nothing today but keep his eyes glued to him, and two pushy teenagers aren’t going to interfere.

After a few more quiet, awkward moments, Armin courageously nudges Mikasa’s arm a second time. Daring. The mushroom head must secretly have balls of iron hidden beneath his pants. 

“Why don’t we ask Eren to spend tomorrow evening with us? I bet he’d like to go out and have a couple ales.”

“ _Today_ is his birthday, Armin, and he isn’t well. He should be with us.”

“It is,” Levi says, “and he’s had a shit day. Let him have his cake. It’s what he wants.”

“What’s your—” she starts, but Eren and Hanji return.

“No steaming ears,” Hanji declares. “In fact, they were squeaky clean. The cleanest ears I’ve ever seen.”

Eren pulls at his lobes, regarding Hanji with an odd expression before he seems to notice the tension in the room.

“Why are you all acting so weird?” He sounds as though he might start ranting. “Were you talking about me again?”

“Not anything bad,” Armin says. “I was suggesting you come out for drinks with Mikasa and me tomorrow since you wouldn’t be up for it tonight.”

“Oh.” Eren scratches his neck. 

“Eren should keep away from libations today,” says Hanji. “It wouldn’t mix well with his pain medication. I’d forbid the cake errand, but it’s a special day, and Levi will disobey my orders and take Eren anyhow.”

Levi puts on his jacket. “It’s not far. He’ll be fine.”

“I’d like that,” Eren says to Armin. He finds a weak smile for Mikasa. “Drinks tomorrow. I’ll feel better.”

She nods and grasps his hand, sharpening the dirty look she hasn’t stopped sending in Levi’s direction. “Sounds good. Just the three of us.”

“I’ll see you guys tomorrow.”

“Looks like it’s going to piss buckets,” Levi says as he peers out the window.

He can feel it in his ankle too, but he keeps that bit of information to himself. Even Hanji isn’t aware of how it stiffens or pains him when the weather changes. On the worst days, like today, he can still hide his limp, but it takes effort, and bringing it up will only result in him and Mikasa exchanging words. He could have rescued Eren without her obsessive meddling. 

He hands Eren his jacket. “Let’s get moving.”

A fine spring mist already coats the windows, so they fetch their cloaks before heading onto the streets. The cobbles are slippery, the air is chilled yet humid. It’s the kind of weather that slips into your bones and makes them ache from the inside. Levi can’t imagine for the life of him why so many townsfolk are lumbering along the walks. 

Eren pulls his hood lower and presses closer to the buildings. 

“All right?” Levi asks. He detests himself for needling, but he suspects Eren isn’t too keen on the chatter and movement of the crowds, and there’s always the chance he’s depleted himself too much for a cake run. 

He grits his teeth as his heart misses a beat. When did he become such a worrywart?

Eren’s eyes glint at Levi from beneath his drenched hood. In spite of the blackout, though dulled, they haven’t wholly lost their liveliness. “Just a lot of people,” he says. “They’re loud.”

Eren would have wanted to be alone for this. That much Levi knows. The streets are crowded, and with Levi hovering along beside him, the makeshift alleys are a better choice.

“Here,” Levi says and veers them to the right.

Eren nods silently and follows Levi through the never-planned trails, down broken declivities from the previous attack. Half of the crumbling piles of stone and fractured wood are from Eren’s own rampaging.

Here in the above—in the _light_ , cratering left after canons and beasts brought dwellings and businesses down, people crept into the deceiving and minatory fissures that remained just as they did in the Underground. They filled in the dingy spaces like mud in cracks. It happens in the countryside too. The pauperized settling, hiding, or hunkering in inhospitable locales. And often, it isn’t only the survivors, but those who are like grubs. They absorb the misery and trade in its wretchedness while wearing eager smiles as if it were necessary sustenance. 

A louse of a man, rag and filth covered, reaches toward them. Levi doesn’t stand between him and Eren but tugs Eren’s cloak. It’s not that the urchin’s destitute that tells Levi to give him a wide berth. It’s his twitching hungry eyes—the kind with nothing behind them but a relished madness. He is a grub.

“I heard Shiganshina already looks better than this shit,” Eren says as he negotiates a pile of rubble. 

“Mm.” Levi pulls his cloak tighter. “According to the powers that be, these ghettos are barely a notch above the Underground.”

“Trost didn’t use to have slums,” Eren says. 

“No,” says Levi, “but they’re forgotten now. Not much different either way.”

“Guess not.”

Despite knowing Eren for less than a year, he’s been a book open for Levi’s perusal since he and Erwin first spoke to him in the basement jail, and Eren proclaimed he wanted to kill all the titans. Unlike Levi, Eren spent a good portion of his childhood in relative peace and happiness. Whatever Levi thinks of Grisha saddling his son with a curse, he was a doctor and provided a decent home and family life. Levi doubts Eren saw anything worse on the tidy streets of Shiganshina than passing beggars or drunks. Eren’s seen destruction and carnage. Even caused some of his own—collaterally, of course. He’s seen outright greed and shades of evil, but Eren’s never seen the black as pitch oil-slick of humanity. 

Levi hopes—likely fruitlessly—this panorama of atrocity is the worst Eren will ever witness. 

“There,” Levi says. He grasps Eren’s shoulder as he stumbles on a rock.

“Mrs Krum’s Crumbery.” Inhaling, Eren’s strides lengthen as his mood rises. “Best apple cake this side of Mitras. Maybe the entire island.”

The smattering of neglected detritus wanes as they round a still intact tenement and arrive on the street, Mrs Krum’s right across the way. 

It may be a bakery, but there isn’t much bread to be found. What Mrs Krum does have on offer are pies, cakes, pastries, cookies, and every manner of treacly provision. 

Levi tries not to breathe too deeply as they step inside. It’s like drowning in syrup or snorting sugar. Eren seems unaffected. In fact, Levi sees his first unforced smile that day as he prowls the display case, crouches, and peers in at an apple-topped sponge cake. His face is half an inch from the glass when Mrs Krum—a rather bird-like woman donning grey double buns—comes over to assist. 

Her liver-spotted hand points to where Eren’s eyes are glued. “One of the last batches until autumn, dear. Fresh apples are running low.”

“I only need two pieces,” Eren says. 

Though he’d probably like the entire cake, his face brightens as she pulls it from the case. This is one dessert Levi can stand. Mrs Krum is conservative with the sugar, her apples aren’t overly gooey, and she adds a few extra cinnamon dashes. The cream will never survive the trip back to HQ, so Levi will pilfer some from the kitchen on their way to his quarters, whip it himself, and add vanilla rather than sugar. 

She cuts two generous pieces, wraps them in waxed vellum, and ties the twine off in neat little bows. 

When Eren digs in his pocket for his change purse, Levi halts him with a staying hand. “I’ll get them.”

“But—”

“The day’s been shit.”

Tugging his collar, Eren pulls a pouty face that shouldn’t look as endearing as it does, but when Levi lifts a brow, he nods. 

“This time.”

That’s good enough. Eren’s cheeks still look hollow, his eyes dark, and his skin too pale, and Levi will be damned if he has to pay for his beloved cake on his birthday. 

Mrs Krum bids them goodbye with a grandmotherly smile, and Eren seems reenergized—albeit only partially—by the free cookie she gave him, still munching it as he walks out the door. 

Regardless, Levi’s continuous observations of Eren are diligent. The rain has come. It pours. The street is slicker now, and Levi sees the wobble and lack of strength in Eren’s gait. He’d forgo their last stop for sausage if he had meat in the small larder in his quarters or if the mess wasn’t serving soggy and flavorless vegetable stew, but the butcher is on the way home, and Eren requires something hearty and meaty. Something that will pack the phantom weight he lost back on. 

On most occasions, Levi would haggle. Most scoff at the amount of time he’ll spend getting the best deal, but it’s an art and skill he had to learn in the Underground to survive, and he’s hard-pressed to give it up. 

Today, Levi doesn’t barter or niggle. And with Eren’s poorly disguised use of the wall for support, Levi places down one sterling for eight fat sausages. There’ll be leftovers, and it’s enough to give them a further meal. Perhaps more depending on how wolfish Eren is.

By the time they negotiate the March deluge with its accompanying winds and are back in Levi’s quarters, Eren is exhausted. Levi thrusts Sencha on him, and half a bar of bitter yet buttery chocolate then orders him to the bath. Despite his high-running internal temperature, he looks cold. Not on the outside, but beneath his skin and muscle. Like his bones were forged in ice. 

Eren doesn’t argue. He rarely does and begins stripping on his way to the washroom, his pullover and undershirt pressed in a wadded ball to his chest like a shield. 

Levi kicks the stove’s leg once he’s out of sight. “How long can this go on?” he asks the tea kettle as he pours water for a second infusion. He leans on the counter and braces his free hand at its edge. Eren’s nightmares are disruptive. Most mornings, he comes out of them decently enough, but after the worst of them, the next day, Eren’s bereft of his usual smiles, and he moves like his shoes were filled with rocks. 

But these sessions do something different. Like with the nightmares, Eren weakens, though there’s a disturbing detachment as well. Like he’s only half there. Faraway. Some portion of him pulled into another realm where Levi can’t touch him. At times, Levi is convinced if he reached for Eren’s hands, his fingers would move right through them or that he’ll wake in the morning, and Eren will have vanished. Gone forever to somewhere Levi cannot follow him to.

Attempting not to move too swiftly, Levi gulps half his burning hot Sencha, and nearly tiptoes to the bathroom. Relieved yet feeling foolish for his fears, he finds Eren nestled in the half-filled tub, bent into a ball, hair a mess, his lips a bit too pale for Levi’s liking. 

Levi crouches beside him. He pushes the hair away from Eren’s sticky forehead. It’s colder than usual. 

“All right, brat?” Levi asks, testing the water’s temperature. “Or do I need to take you back to Hanji?”

“Maybe going out was a bad idea, but I’m all right.” Eren turns over the soap cake in his hands. Lather clings to his fingers like glue. “Head just hurts, and I’m hungry. Tired.”

“We’ll eat,” Levi says, concealing his worry. “No chess tonight.”

“But …” Eren begins. He focuses downward at the froth floating on the water’s surface. “I wanted to play.”

“I’ll let you have your cake in bed,” Levi says. “We’ll read.”

Eren nods mutely, a small quirk to his lips. He brushes his soapy hand against Levi’s knee before he rises. “Thank you for letting me use your tub.”

Levi wants to say _I love you_. He wants to get in the bath with Eren and massage the tensity from his shoulders, but Eren needs nourishment, so he bends over and skims his lips between his brows instead. “Make it nice and hot. The warm water will get your blood flowing again.”

With Eren occupied in the bath, Levi goes to work. He stokes the stove, lights the hearth, puts dinner in the oven, then slips out and goes next door to Eren’s room. Months before, after the night terror incident that led to the confirmation of his and Eren’s previously unspoken affections, Hanji gave Levi a key.

It wasn’t so Levi could sneak in for late-night shenanigans—of course, Hanji doesn’t know what happened between them—, but because breaking down doors required her to fill out several requisition forms in triplicate, and Hanji would _cut her hands off_ _with a butterknife_ if she were ever _forced to scribe a concocted excuse for something so asinine again_. 

The fact Levi’s assault splintered the door and left the frame precariously hanging, was as she put it, _five steps too far._

He can still see the wounds in the wall despite the repair. 

Inside Eren’s room, the darkness is total, the air frigid. Not even the stove fire is burning, and if Levi didn’t know better, he’d assume these quarters were unassigned. They feel lifeless. He lights a candle and finds a rectangular package wrapped in plain brown paper on the small table adjacent to the stove. It reeks of honey and dried fruits. 

“Damn it, all this sugar …” 

After a cursory inspection, Levi moves to Eren’s footlocker. Within, he finds a comfortably used nightshirt and gathers it along with a pair of drawers. On the way back toward the entrance, he snags thick wool socks, clean and hanging to dry over the fireless hearth, then collects Hanji’s honied gift.

He doesn’t know what it is, but it smells too sweet for his taste. No doubt Eren will devour it.

When Levi returns to his rooms, he quietly closes the door, puts Hanji’s treat on the table, and sets to making yet more tea and hearth poking. 

There’s a chorus of mumbles, curses, and the sound of the soap plonking into the water. Eren is edgy.

That fact doesn’t make it any easier for Levi to force himself to retrieve his gift for Eren from the hiding place it’s occupied for the last month. After he pulls it from beneath the floorboards, he looks at the little box in his hand. He stares at it as though he’s staring at a weapon or his heart. 

The box isn’t teak or walnut. The varnish isn’t the highest grade. The carving on its cover isn’t intricate.

Fingertip drawing down its edge, his jaw tightens with anxiety. His plan was to wait until the next day or the day after or maybe even a week later to hand it over. Levi’s never been one for giving gifts, much less giving them on the appropriate day in question. Perhaps it comes from the fact that although he thinks he knows the date of his own birth, he’s not entirely sure it’s accurate. Or maybe it’s because most of his life was spent in a squalid forgotten place, and worrying about such trivialities wasn’t a luxury he could afford. 

Even when he was making decent coin as a thug, he didn’t pay much attention. It didn’t help that he had only associates and almost no _friends._ And neither Farlan nor Isabel ever knew when their birthdays were either.

Now that Levi stares at the trinket box, he realizes this is the first real gift he’s genuinely ever given to anyone. 

The sound of sloshing comes from the washroom, and Levi hastily sets the box on the table next to Eren’s side of the bed. The last thing he wants is for Eren to stride in and find him standing there staring at the item like an idiot. He fishes a handkerchief from his pocket, and for good measure, lays it over his gift, hopeful Eren won’t notice while he dresses. 

“I put your pajamas on the bureau,” Levi calls as Eren’s footsteps approach. 

There’s a gruff “thanks,” and, still rattled from leaving his gift, Levi tries to rush from the bedroom to avoid meeting Eren on the way out. They end up face to face despite his efforts. 

Levi’s head is cast down, but he bumps into a dripping Eren who pulls him into an embrace careless of his long wet arms. 

It’s not out of the ordinary for Eren to hold Levi. He doesn’t do it all the time, but it’s not so intermittent that this is shocking. What jars Levi is the gentle intensity of it. It feels like being pulled into the gap in a wounded heart.

Levi grasps as un-desperately as he can, and he allows Eren to hang on tight and crushing. When Eren’s arms slacken, Levi pulls back to get a better look at him. The darkness beneath his eyes persists but has faded almost to normal. Most of the color has returned to his cheeks, and though his eyes still look like there’s too much going on behind them, they have their usual post-bath spark. 

Eren pushes his sopping hair from his forehead. “I just needed something to hold onto.”

“You don’t look like death anymore,” Levi says. “Let me get this.” He leans into the washroom, grasps a towel from the hook, and drapes it over Eren’s head. 

“I didn’t dry off.”

“I see that,” says Levi. “You’re getting water on the floor.”

“Sorry.” Eren shrugs and readjusts his towel. “I started to feel penned-up in there. I’ll clean it.”

“I’ve got it. Just get your arse dressed and go sit by the fire. There’s fresh tea.”

When Eren emerges from the bedroom, his hair is no longer drenched and adhered to his head but rather a damp mess. While it seems to go along with his still drawn and exhausted features, there’s something Levi always finds attractive about the wildness of Eren’s tresses. 

Contrary to Levi’s previous instructions, Eren doesn’t plant himself in his fireside chair but at the kitchen table. There’s a faint smile as he pulls Hanji’s parcel toward him. 

“Sugary,” he says, taking a deep inhale above the paper-wrapped package. “It smells like dessert, but I don’t want to wait to open it.”

Levi joins Eren and pours them both Silver Needle. “It’s your present. No one said you have to.”

“Dinner smells good too though, I don’t want to spoil my appetite.”

“When do sweets ever spoil your appetite?”

Eren’s grin doesn’t hold its usual splendor, but he manages something close as he unties the twine and then unfolds a fastened slip of parchment. “Whatever it is, I won’t have too much.”

Levi watches Eren scan the missive, his puzzled frown deepening as his eyes move left to right, left to right, and on. 

“Something interesting?” Levi asks. 

Eren scratches his head, which only serves to further tousle his hair. “A kage-what?” He hands the note over to Levi. “I don’t know what that is.”

_Eren,_

_I thought you deserved something sweet for your birthday,_

_but better than the plain old butter biscuits I keep for you._

_Nothing at the bakery struck me, and thus, I decided to embark_

_on an adventure in baking. I searched my books and found a recipe_

_for this intriguing cake. It is called a kagemand._

_I hope you enjoy it. Happy special day._

_Hanji_

“A kagemand,” Levi says. “It’s a kid’s birthday cake that’s supposed to look like the kid.”

“Never heard of one,” says Eren. “How do you know what it is?”

Not that it’s anything to bring up, but aside from an occasional game of chess with Erwin or a glass or two of whiskey with Hanji, Levi spent most of his evenings as a loner after he emerged from the Underground and joined the S.C.. Contrary to trumped-up rumors, he never made a hobby of starting bar fights, forced his squad to run drills until four am, nor did he waste his free nights throwing his meager salary at whores or fucking everything with two legs. 

Until Eren, he mostly stayed to himself.

“I’ve read a lot,” Levi says at last. 

“Mm.” Eren smiles. “Let’s take a look at it.”

Once the waxed vellum is pulled away, what is revealed is perplexingly shocking, to say the least. Eren’s mouth has dropped slightly open. His eyes are wide, and Levi can’t help a wheeze at the sickly sweet effigy on the pan. 

“Adorable,” he drawls with a raise of his brow, taking in the crimson candied heart spanning the breadth of cake-Eren’s chest. The adornment looks to be constructed of crushed humbugs. His hair is composed of shaved chocolate curls, and his eyes are most definitely two candied green cherries. 

_EREN_ is emblazoned in pure white icing over a stomach accentuated by what looks to be cocoa buttercream accented abdominal muscles that are far too defined. 

It resembles Eren’s titan, but the details of the face indicate differently. Whereas Eren’s titan has pointy ears and toothy cheeks, his kagemand’s ears are round, its cheeks—rosy and full from a sugar cube smile—are pressed up to his fruity eyes. 

Eren clears his throat. He covers his mouth. “She didn’t give me clothes.”

“They might have been beyond her skill.”

“But … but I’m naked.”

“Not necessarily.” Levi leans closer to the cloying disgrace. “She didn’t include your dick.”

Eren’s index finger hovers above his cake crotch. “That looks like a candied pecan. Maybe she did.”

“No,” Levi says, inspecting closer. “I know Hanji. If that was supposed to be your penis, she would have included your balls.”

“It’s Hanji though. You never know with her.” Eren’s cheeks bloom pink. “Are you sure?”

“She appreciates accuracy,” Levi says. “My guess, it’s some sort of pecan loincloth.”

Eren shifts in his seat. “Sounds bumpy. Maybe sticky.”

“Tch.” Levi kicks Eren under the table. “You can always eat the pecan and look at what’s beneath it to be sure.”

Shaking his head, Eren fetches a knife and two dishes. When he returns to the table, there’s a moment Levi thinks he might stab his cakey counterpart, but he angles the blade above a frosting covered arm. 

“Let’s try it,” Eren says. “Would you like a hand or a foot?”

There is something morbidly ironic about watching Eren carve into his cake-self given it’s Levi’s task to rent or, fates forbid, kill Eren should he lose his shit. 

Chewing his lip, Levi stares at a foot. Besides the fact the feet are decorated with milder almond slices rather than sweet blond raisins, there’s something stomach-turning at the prospect of eating one of Eren’s hands, considering Reiner cut them off. 

“Foot.”

A clawing apprehension expands beneath Levi’s ribs as he stares down at Eren’s ‘foot’ on the dessert dish. He isn’t sure if it’s because the scent of syrup glaze has filled his nostrils or because he’s about to consume a portion of Eren—representation or not. 

“Too sweet for you?” Eren asks. He holds his right kagemand hand between his thumb and forefinger, poised not far from his lips. 

Levi shakes away his ruminations. “I hope she asked Sasha for advice.”

Lifting a shoulder, Eren takes the first bite of himself. “Who knows. Maybe she even helped.”

“We’d be so lucky.”

Holding Levi’s gaze, Eren chews, and after a swallow, he nods in that way people do when they think something they just tasted is practically orgasmic. He waves his hand over his cake and grasps the knife. “It’s good. Outstanding,” he affirms. “Just try it. I’m going to eat my other hand.”

Eren’s foot is tasty, but it’s sickly-sweet, so Levi passes on eating the other and relishes in the savory seasoning of their pastry swaddled sausages and carrot mash. Along with the bath, hearth fire, and sugar, supper brings more life back to Eren’s face, and by the time they’ve finished the apple cake in bed along with a calming tisane, Eren is more himself. Wearied indeed, but his evening sprightliness emerges enough to soothe the worst of Levi’s fret.

Despite the change, he leaves Eren in bed and collects the dishes and mugs to wash and dry alone.

“I’ll clean these up,” he says and nods towards a volume on his night table. “The bookmark’s where we left off, but I think you started dozing three pages before that. Catch up. And no reading ahead.”

Eren pulls the book into his lap. It’s not notably bulky, but somehow it makes him look small while reclining against the fluffy pillows with the quilt to his chest, the ties at the neck of his nightshirt loose and uncinched. Maybe nothing good has come of it, but Levi misses how that key looked around Eren’s neck.

“What are you looking at?” Eren asks.

“You,” says Levi, “you look mischievous.” 

Sighing, Eren gives Levi a sleepy yet cheeky smile. “I’m not going to peek ahead. Promise.”

The novel lies open at the center of the bed when Levi returns, but that’s not why he battles to keep his still-damp hands from fisting his nightshirt.

The previously obscuring handkerchief is on Eren’s lap while he looks curiously at the trinket box. He turns toward Levi. “This is new. It’s pretty.”

Levi tries not to fixate on his clenching toes. “Oh, that.”

“Is it a handkerchief holder?” Eren asks. 

“It’s for you.”

“For handkerchiefs.”

Covering the box was a stupid mistake. “It’s a trinket box,” Levi says. His voice may have cracked, so he clears it. “You can put whatever you want in it.”

Reaching toward the box, Eren’s fingers pause before he grasps it. He looks over his shoulder. He appears like those destitute children in the Underground Levi used to give shoes to—mouths all agape. Eyes shining. Stunned. 

“It’s a present?” 

Yes, it’s a present. A thoughtful fucking gift. It’s also a barrier Levi walked over, and though he sensed this was different, and he was toeing at a protective obstacle, what he’s done didn’t fully occur to him until now.

“I suppose,” Levi says.

Eren’s eyes clamp as he nods and then picks up the box. He sets it on his lap, thumbs tracing its edge the same way Levi’s finger did not long before. 

“Can I keep it here?” Eren asks. “I sleep here more than my own room. I wouldn’t want to be away from it.”

“That side table is practically yours.” 

Inhaling a deep breath, Eren peers at it closely. Lovingly. Levi can see all of Eren’s Eren-ness building like an expanding bellows or a soap bubble about to pop. 

“You got me a present,” he bursts before putting it on the table with far more gentleness than required. “Whatever I want, you said! I’ll be right back.”

Before Levi can say anything, Eren is zooming from the bedroom and bounding through the living area in his nightshirt. Levi watches in horror as Eren opens the door.

“Eren,” he hisses, “you’re not dressed.”

His pants. Levi grabs his pants before he growls at himself and chucks them back into his room. Currently, HQ stands mostly empty, and he and Eren are the only two assigned to this level, but Eren loudly running from Levi’s quarters in his too-small nightshirt is not _covert._

 _Fuck,_ Levi thinks. Eren needs to stop growing so damn fast.

“Eren,” he repeats as he hangs at his door like a rat hiding from the light.

“Be right back.” Eren disappears into his room with some kind of skipping stride only he’d be capable of. 

In a heartbeat, he went from looking drawn, exhausted, sallow, and perhaps beleaguered to rosy-cheeked, beaming, and full of too much energy. The transformation is remarkable.

“Too much fucking sugar …” 

If someone comes, he’ll just tell them he was checking on Eren. It is his job, after all. At worst, he’ll glare. Unfortunately, his knife isn’t on him, but he can stab with his eyes. 

He can hear Eren shuffling around, likely in his footlocker looking for whatever it is that needs to immediately go in the box. Levi shouldn’t be surprised. Never having given anyone something meaningful before, he wasn’t sure what to expect. Maybe tears, perhaps a squeezing embrace. If it was someone else, a quiet _thank you._

“I’m going to keep this forever,” he hears Eren say. It causes both a warm wash and a sharp twist in his heart. 

Nobody has _forever_ , but Eren is guaranteed less of forever than the rest of them. 

It’s a bittersweet thought, shitty enough, the lump in his throat doesn’t fully dissolve when Levi hears shuffling from the stairway. By the sound of the scraping steps, it’s thankfully, Hanji. The last thing he wants is for Armin or Mikasa or fucking Jean to find him and Eren fluttering around the corridor in their nightclothes like ninnies. 

“Levi.” Hanji’s already gawking as she comes around the corner. “Whatcha doing? Is Eren all right?”

“I’m okay,” Eren says as he pokes his head from his doorway. “I’m trying to find something.” He looks at Levi. “Oh, sorry. I didn’t mean to be so loud. Did I wake you, Captain?”

Pinching his temple, Levi holds in a sigh. Eren is such a terrible fibber.

Hanji stands at Eren’s entryway. She pulls her bathrobe tighter. “Your quarters are freezing,” she says with a wave of her hand. “I don’t care if your two are up playing games past curfew. I just wanted to check on you before I retired.”

“We were having tea,” says Levi, glaring.

Hanji wrinkles her nose. “Why don’t we go to Levi’s room. I don’t have my coat.”

“I found it,” Eren says as he reappears. Clutching a small slip of paper in his hand, he closes his door.

Knuckles pressed to her lips, Hanji snorts and looks between them. “Isn’t that cute,” she says. “You two match in your bedclothes… but”—she points—“Eren, your nightshirt seems a tad small. You can requisition another if you’ve grown out of this one.”

“It’s okay,” Eren says. “The issued pajamas are itchy.”

“So’s the underwear.” Levi scoffs. “You can find better in the slums.”

When they enter Levi’s rooms, he notes Hanji has her little tool bag. Not the one she takes to the field, but the tiny one she can fit barely more than a stethoscope, thermometer, and a small notepad in.

He doesn’t doubt checking on Eren is genuine, but there’s an air of poorly obscured nosiness as well. Or maybe loneliness. She’s wearing Moblit’s robe and slippers again. That’s nothing new. She’s been doing it more since he died. And he often threw them at her any time she went flying out of her rooms during the night, but as it stands, she’s still wearing her uniform beneath. Even her gear straps are still on. 

Levi retrieves his own dressing gown and tosses a blanket at Eren before he goes to his cupboards. 

“Sit down,” he says to Hanji. “You’ll reject my tea since you’re a beast, but I have glögg.”

Without pause, she collapses in Levi’s chair. “Are we having a party?”

“Tch. That would be against protocol.”

“And Eren’s nightgown wouldn’t pass muster under Section 114 of the handbook, paragraph 5 of the uniform code, but I’m not telling the brass.” She stretches her legs and waves her hand at Levi. “Paragraph 2 forbids your adorable little neckerchief too.”

Eren gasps. “It’s a cravat.”

“Whatever you want to call it, it’s dashing.”

He thrusts a glass of cold glögg into Hanji’s hand—if she wants it properly warmed, she can heat it up her damn self—and then retrieves the tea. “Better than those hideous medals Historia gave us.”

“Those are worse than my Commander’s tie. I hide mine in my desk drawer,” Hanji says. “Right beneath my underwear. Only put it on if I have to see Zackley.” She takes a gulp and leans toward Eren as Levi settles at the table. She requires a bath, but he’ll let her have his chair for now. “I should have put one on your kagemand, Eren!”

Lifting the edge of its paper covering, Levi raises a brow. “You didn’t even give him clothes.”

“He has pecan underwear, and I was going to give him a cloak, but fresh spinach is unavailable right now. That canned shit would have been soggy and not the right green.”

“It’s good, thank you, Hanji,” Eren says. “Do you want some?”

She peeks beneath its covering. “I suppose I’d take a foot since there’s one left. That is if you don’t mind.”

Eren sets his tea aside. “I’ll get you a plate.”

As the seconds tick by, the more Levi’s convinced that the reason for Hanji’s visit was along his initial impression. He simply isn’t yet sure which is the stronger drive: her loneliness or her boredom. 

After she finishes devouring Eren’s foot, without waiting for Eren’s tea-warmed mouth to cool, she retrieves her thermometer and shoves it between his lips while making him follow her finger in the interim. 

“I wasn’t too concerned,” she says as she reclaims the thermometer after what was at most a minute, “but you don’t have a fever. Eyes are good. Normal reaction. How’s your head?”

“No headache,” Eren says, and although his voice is mostly level, Levi can read his confused concern from the crease between his brows and the slightly higher pitch to his voice. “Stomach’s okay too. Levi made sausages. I’m just a little tired.”

She pats both Eren and Levi’s knees, a sudden morose smile etching her face. It’s gone before she says, “You take good care of each other.”

She stays for another half a glass of spiced wine before her eyes take on a sleepy haze, and she abruptly dismisses herself. “It’s getting late,” she says, checking her pocket watch. “I should try to sleep. And there’s always a mountain of paperwork if I can’t.”

Levi should probably ask if she’s sure. Offer her a bit more drink or something to eat, but whatever she’s visited for, whether for company, feeling her own demons too close to be alone, to spy, or out of concern for Eren, Levi knows she’s satisfied. As much as Hanji at times craves companionship, there usually comes the point where she’s had her fill and insists on retreating back to her quarters or that cave of an office she occupies. 

“You look like that drink did you in,” Levi says. It’s the most polite way he can find to tell her she looks like warmed over shit from her ill-kept hours and whatever other stress she’s under. 

“Thanks for checking on me,” Eren says, rising to scoop up her china.

“You look better,” she says, a smirk tugging at the corners of her lips, “but why don’t you stay here tonight. I’d feel better if you weren’t alone.”

Eren doesn’t seem to notice, but Levi suspects precisely what she’s getting at. Poking, teasing jerk that she is. 

“Worry about your own sleep, four-eyes,” he says, then walks to the door and holds it open. 

“Whatever you say, Grumpy McBossyboots.” She pats Levi’s head. “Good night, Eren.” And with that, she departs. 

After drying the dishes, Eren and Levi move right to the bed, and Eren puts his treasure in his trinket box. 

Levi didn’t enquire, but it looks to be a bookmark. Similar to the one that holds the place in the volume Levi is currently reading aloud. Thick parchment stamped with faded black, but rather than being adorned with a soaring bird like his own, he thinks it was decorated with a great tree, infinite branches stretching. It appeared old as well. Like Levi’s favored placeholder, a bit tattered and softened and blunted at the edges from use. 

As Levi reads, voice low and soft, he wonders how long Eren’s had it yet doesn’t ask. 

Eren’s weight is sinking heavier against him with each paragraph, and given his day, it’s not surprising that after a salvo of indignance at the revelation that the White Wizard betrayed the Grey Wizard, his breaths slow. 

Nor is it a surprise that after whispering a few more lines, when Levi glances down, he finds Eren nestled against his chest, sound asleep.


	7. Chapter Six: Genius

Hanji’s pencil taps on her desk. She matches its beat to footsteps drawing closer. Irritated little feet stomping frettingly yet with unhindered purpose. 

Levi. 

“Levi!” 

She’s probably about to be crushed for yesterday.

He didn’t knock, and without replying to her greeting, punts the door shut, locks it, and sits in the chair before her desk. It’s dusty, ancient, and he often refers to it as filthy. He barely ever uses it.

He doesn’t say anything, but Hanji knows this expression, or rather, what she calls, his _expression-less._ Yes, Hanji knows this face. When Levi tries to make himself appear so blank and dangerous, it accomplishes the complete opposite. No one else is perceptive enough to notice it. Perhaps not even Eren. To others, it screams, _leave me the fuck alone or die,_ but after long years, Hanji doesn’t fall for it. She would know not to even if he hadn’t paid her a visit at eight in the evening on a Saturday night. 

The precarious tension rolling off him settles on her skin like a sticky summer haze.

Still, this is Levi, her very best friend, perhaps her most very best friend, and right now, she must handle him like a soft and furry venomous snake or a spine covered field mouse. 

She stops herself from laughing at her own conjured animal analogies. 

Levi hates coffee, so she dusts off one of her best mugs and offers him some. “Need a pick me up?”

“I’d rather drink dishwater,” he snarls.

_Perfect,_ she thinks, _good, good._

Already it’s obvious he’s not here to give her a dressing down about Eren passing out the day before. But Hanji can pretend. 

“I admit it, I pushed Eren too hard yesterday.”

Levi flashes his teeth like he’s attempting to look intimidating, though, beneath his apparent scorn, he almost seems worried. “I’m not here about that bullshit.”

“Oh?” He admitted that quickly enough. Interesting. She resists both making an expression of relief or curiosity. “Then wouldn’t you rather be playing chess and drinking tea with him instead of visiting me?”

Hanji relishes being deceitful and manipulative when it suits her, though she doesn’t enjoy it with Levi. She knows Eren must still be out with Armin and Mikasa, but as much as it pains her, there’s only one way to deal with Levi when he appears so painfully perplexed. 

“He’s still out drinking,” Levi says.

“Maybe,” she begins, opening a desk drawer, “we should drink too.”

Levi shrugs and offers a curt, “hmm.” It won’t do anything for him, but it helps her find a route to loosening his uncommunicative tongue every once in a while.

The whiskey bottle is only a third empty, and unlike most else of what’s in her office, the tumblers are clean. The last time they had any was when Levi wandered here after they locked Eren and Mikasa in jail.

She doesn’t wait for him to accept, but loathe as he would ever be to admit it, Levi can be a complicatedly simple creature when someone he loves has him on edge. 

Sliding over a nice fat finger, she sighs, allows her own mask to fall, and reveals her sympathetic smile. 

“I might be a genius,” she says, “but I’m not a mind-reading incense sniffer.”

He examines his glass, and seemingly satisfied with its sparkling cleanliness, sips. “I need to talk to you.” 

“Yes,” she says and sucks down a dram. “I divined that ten minutes ago.”

For a fleeting instant, Levi looks like hurt and murder. “I don’t need your—”

And oh, he is tender. She’s gone too far.

“Please,” she says, measuring her words carefully to amend her mistake, “stay. What can I help out with?”

“Shut your mouth and listen,” Levi says. “Fuck …” 

“I’m listening.” Hanji cocks an ear toward him. “Whatever you—”

“Don’t interrupt.”

“I won’t.”

“Don’t pry.”

“I’ll try not to.”

“Don’t laugh.”

“I’ll try my best not to do that either.”

“I will cut you if this leaves these four walls.”

She crosses her heart. “Even these walls don’t have ears. I checked.”

Levi sneers and recrosses his legs. At least he isn’t sending her a death glare.

“Okay.” Raising her hands, Hanji sighs. “Eren?”

“Shut up.”

“Grouch.”

“I said no prying.”

“And I said, I would _try_ not to.”

“I didn’t say Eren.” 

“I might be your Commander, but I never wanted the job,” she says, shrugging. “It’s not as though I’m going to turn you in. Have I ever struck you as someone who follows the rules?”

“Tch. They couldn’t afford to lose me.”

“True,” she says. “And since that’s cleared up: Eren. Why does our little Hope have you so frazzled?”

“ _Frazzled_ , my arsehole.”

“I’m sure it’s a very nice arsehole,” Hanji says while trying not to laugh at Levi’s tiny hiss. “But we’re not talking about your arsehole. We’re talking about Eren.”

Levi’s fingers tense on his glass. He looks like he’s contemplating an escape. “Fuck you.”

Groaning, Hanji settles on a more direct approach. “You can come off the insults and the mysterious bullshit, shorty.” She winks as best she can these days before she rests a foot on her cluttered desk. A compass falls to the floor. She ignores it. “Don’t look at me that way. I may be eccentric, but I’m not daft. It’s an Eren problem.”

Levi glares.

“Stop that,” she says, “no need to confirm or deny, but I know that scowl. It’s a very special scowl, and you’re shit at hiding it from me.”

Levi pinches the bridge of his nose. He sips his whiskey.

“I think …” He hesitates in an un-Levi-like fashion. And Hanji has to restrain her exuberance over having caught him by his itty bitty toe.

“You think …?”

“Eren might be a masochist.”

It takes monumental control not to roll her eye, though she knows she isn’t wholly successful when Levi uncrosses and recrosses his legs. 

“We already knew that.”

If Levi weren’t so defensive and unsettled, Hanji might be concerned. Her heart would jump as she flew to her feet, worried Eren had hurt himself again. 

The kid has always had a tendency to smack himself in his head, but Levi calling her to Eren’s quarters months ago because he’d found him with his arm bitten to the bone was in another realm altogether. 

Despite her keen sense, she still must ask. “Eren didn’t chew himself up again?”

“No.”

“Then what happened?” She takes a big swig of her whiskey, then slurps her stale coffee, so Levi has time to think. 

Hanji’s long known the action comforts Levi like a blanket or teddy bear, but when his hand slides toward his jackknife pocket, she decides he’s had long enough. 

“You have to give me something, grumpy-pants.”

Again, Hanji waits while Levi stares. He’s probably contemplating strangling her. Time ticks by in its perpetual stutter, and she concentrates on the clicking of her cobweb-covered cuckoo clock. This is one of those times when she doesn’t want to blink for fear it would disturb Levi’s thoughts. It’s like walking the edge of the knife currently so close to his hand.

Before he speaks, he gives her one of those looks that cries, _I don’t want to seem affected, but I am_. 

“He wants me to hurt him.”

Hanji hums. There’s a line between his brows that only Eren-fret produces. And it’s as though she’s watching Levi’s beautiful little heart begin to crack.

She doesn’t need more drink yet but pours herself a splash. She saw Eren earlier as he was leaving to the mess with Armin and Mikasa. He looked perfectly fine. In fact, he looked far less troubled and despairing than he did the day before. Healthy too. He was even smiling. 

He can heal, so his unmarred face is no indication Levi didn’t punch him in it. But Hanji would bet her own life that isn’t what Levi is brooding about. Either Eren asked Levi to hurt him, and Levi refused, or this is something else. 

Though it flies in the face of how she’s always envisioned them, she has her suspicions. 

Beating around the bush is getting old. It crossed dull ten yards ago. “Is this a sex thing?” she asks.

Surprisingly, Levi doesn’t answer with venom. He mutters, “I don’t know.”

That is indeed odd. Odder than many of the oddities which, like some force of cosmic magnetism, seem to surround their odd lives. Neither Levi nor Eren have ever said they are what they are, but it’s been no secret for a while. At least not to Hanji. She doesn’t know if they’ve had sex. More often, she’s pictured their intimate relationship revolving around drinking icky tea and cuddling. She’s even drawn masterpieces of it. 

She refocuses. “It _might_ be a sex thing then?” She leans forward on her desk and drops her voice to a whisper. “Don’t get all grouchy, but did it happen while you were in bed?”

Levi huffs. Perhaps she has finally worn his prickly poison spines down.

“It happened more than once,” he says.

“Good, good!” She shouldn’t feel so excited about this revelation while—looking miserable—poor Levi grits his teeth and sits in the beaten brown corduroy chair he hates, but they’re making progress. “During sex then?” she asks, preparing to fend off a sneer. 

Levi sighs. “Before.”

Hanji’s never had sex. She has no interest in putting her tongue in anyone’s mouth, being groped, nor partaking in sensual caressing. Despite that, she has a good sense of when sex is involved in whatever conundrum is going on. And though it isn’t appealing, she’s read about it. Deeply. For her, it holds a fascination that exceeds even the captivation of her prized butterfly specimens. 

“It wasn’t bad then if it got you both in the mood for it. What’s the problem?”

“Fuck …” Levi says, and Hanji restrains herself from pouncing on the apparent joke by merely saying, _yes, fucking_. 

Levi’s glass twists in his hand. He taps his finger on the rim. His left leg shifts over his right. “It was brothel shit.” 

“You paid Eren?” Hanji asks to get a rise. She needs Levi a bit more animated and less despondent. She also needs him to be more specific. “Or like the brothels in Orphic Alley?”

“I didn’t pay him, you nutter.” He smacks his empty tumbler down and flings it toward her. “Like that place, the Baron’s Slave. The one Everard owns.” 

_Oh well_ , she thinks. “Kinkery. That isn’t so bad.” 

She’s seen all sorts coming and going from there when she goes to the shittier part of Trost for banned books. For the most part, it’s always sounded like people were having a good time—depending on one’s definition. 

She might be going too far again, but not going far enough has never served her well. It hasn’t served Levi well either. 

“So what did you do? Tie him up and bite him a little?”

The muscles in Levi’s jaw work, but he just stares at her. 

Maybe it was something cuter. Hanji can even picture it. “Did you torture him with tickles?”

This time Levi frowns at her as if she hasn’t suggested more ludicrous things in her life. 

“It didn’t involve knives?”

“Fuck, no.”

“That’s a relief.” She drums her fingers. “Did you give him a spanking?”

Levi’s eye twitches, and oh, he looks angry. So angry. At the same time, he seems like a child who’s been caught stealing a cookie. If she squints, she is almost sure his cheeks have gone the faintest pink. She would need a magnifying glass to check, but if she gets too close with one right now, she’ll probably lose her remaining eye. 

Instead, she grins. She makes sure she leers. She slides the whiskey bottle closer to keep it safe. Maybe Levi will throw it. 

“You spanked him!” She slaps her desktop. “Or did he spank you?”

Levi closes his eyes and inhales so sharply she thinks he could cut her with the forthcoming exhale. “If you say one word …”

“Have I ever violated your trust?”

“Not a syllable,” Levi says. “I mean it, glasses.”

Hanji takes a relieved breath. With how tightly wound he’s been, she thought perhaps it was something darker. This is more innocuous than anything she could have imagined. Until a few minutes ago, she wasn’t sure if Eren and Levi had ever had sex, but she always pictured if they did, it’s as intriguing as watching paint dry. Perhaps the most boring sex ever. And as far as kinkery goes, this is about as pedestrian as one can get. 

She’s caught more recruits over the years slapping each other’s arses than she can count on one hand. 

Hanji almost wants to laugh. But there’s still more to uncover, and she’s not going to scare Levi off after how far they’ve come. She pours him a half finger and another for herself. 

“If you both had fun, what’s there to be concerned about?”

“It wasn’t supposed to be fun,” Levi says and pauses. “He looked how he did that night.”

“Eren’s had a lot of nights he’s worried me.”

“When he fucked up his arm.”

Hanji slumps. She puts her chin in her hands. “Shit.”

“The first time, he had a dream, and,” Levi points at her, “don’t start your chattering.”

She nods. Levi doesn’t often say much at once. He’s clipped. He’s guarded. He finds a way to convey what he needs in the fewest words possible. But on occasion, Hanji has had the privilege of listening to Levi in a stream. Right now, in her chest, it feels like walking up to a beautiful cliff he’s going to tip her over. She won’t do more than nudge him on and let him know she’s listening until he takes one of those long deep breaths or looks her in the eye. 

His legs are once again crossed. This time right over left, but Hanji blinks at his fingertips, tensing on his knee. 

“He looked like he’d do _it_ again.”

Hanji only sighs. 

“He wanted me to punish him.”

“So he asked you to spank him?”

“No,” Levi says irritatedly. His fingers flex. “I didn’t expect it. He begged. He didn’t know what he wanted. I said it in jest.”

Hanji can picture it. Levi frowning, trying to figure out what to do. She doesn’t know much about relationships, but she’s sure as shit Levi doesn’t either. And Eren is a wonderful handful as merely a dear friend and subordinate alone. “You were frustrated?”

“What do you think?”

She holds up her hands and leans closer. Levi will never take it, and she’s never been touchy, but she stretches her arm across her desk. 

“Does it help him?”

Levi pinches a temple. “I think … I don’t know. He sleeps through. No nightmares.”

“I have a question?” Hanji says. If he tells her to fuck off, she’ll find another route, but she has a hunch, and if she’s right, she has a theory, and if Levi listens to her, she might know how to guide him. 

“You’re going to ask anyway,” he says, but Hanji gets one short nod.

“Did you do it last night?”

“Why?” He doesn’t need to confirm it. The change in his posture and expression is enough to. He meets her eye, and she won’t force him into an admission. 

“He looked better today than yesterday,” she says. 

“Yeah …” Levi says, though he seems lost for words. Maybe he tries to find them in his bit of whiskey because he takes the rest in one gulp. 

“You have a problem with it,” she ventures. And Hanji is probably sliding her feet over the thinnest ice. One wrong step, and she’ll be falling through. “If it’s not your thing, tell him.” 

“He’s asked for other shit,” Levi says, “none of this is probably good for him.”

“Did you consider the possibility it is.”

Now Levi’s back to looking dangerous. “Me hitting him is better than him hitting himself or ripping himself up?”

“Yes!”

“And if I’m fucking him up? Then what?” 

Hanji’s shocked. There was no long pause. No glare, no shift in Levi’s disposition that indicated he wanted to throttle her nor storm from her office. Only Levi looking at his hands as if he’s not sure if they’re weapons. 

“Did you come here because you wanted to confess or for advice?”

He hisses. “I’ve got shit all to confess.”

“Advice it is then.

“It seems a little strange to you—worrisome,” Hanji says. “But you would never hurt Eren, not really. If it was so bad for him, your instincts would have stopped you.” She shrugs. “Unless it makes _you_ uncomfortable. If that’s the case, tell Eren. He wouldn’t want you to do something you didn’t want to.”

“I want to help him.”

“Then your hangup is that you’re hurting him?”

“You deserve a fucking prize.”

Sometimes Hanji wants to smash her head on her desk, and sometimes she wants to cry. She’s never seen Levi and Eren hold hands. They’ve never exchanged a kiss in front of her. An _I love you_ directed at each other has never found her ears. She doubts it’s crossed the universe’s myriad of ears either. But none of that matters. Hanji feels what’s between them even when the other isn’t present, and her chest twists knowing either of them is in turmoil. 

It’s a weird, deeply personal subject, but she’s heard deeper weirder confessions from dying soldiers on battlefields. 

Sometimes before the battles.

Any day she could be one of those soldiers. Any of them could, so she’ll help the best way she can. 

“Do you want to know what I think?”

“I’m sitting in your disgusting office wasting our whiskey.” It doesn’t last from one tick of the clock to the next, but the corners of Levi’s mouth turn down. “I could be in bed.”

She ignores his moody quip and the implied _alone_ he stubbornly refused to add. “You’d never go too far, and it’s better than him beating himself up or worse. Maybe it helps him work through things.” 

“It could make it worse.”

“True.” The possibility can’t be discounted, but an arrogantly triumphant flutter in Hanji’s gut tells her there is a ninety-nine percent chance she’s right. “There’s no place Eren is safer than with you. He needs you more than you will admit. So why not do it when he asks?”

Levi laughs. Maybe the whiskey has for once gotten to him. It’s scary. “He said he doesn’t want to ask anymore.”

Hanji nearly laughs with him. Not out of callousness, but because the solution seems so simple. “Then don’t make him ask.”

“Are you missing half your brain?” Levi narrows his eyes and scoffs at her. “I should randomly beat him?”

“No,” she says and knocks on her head. She doesn’t admit that suddenly the entire issue it has taken too long to get out of Levi unfolds before her eyes. She could sit here with him all night and dredge it from him, but she knows precisely what Levi needs. Besides, this will be easier than watching Levi cross and uncross his legs for the forty-third time. 

“Let me get you something,” Hanji says and stands. Her arse has fallen asleep. Her knees are tingling. She needs more coffee or maybe whiskey. She needs to put on pajamas so she can pretend she is a normal person.

“If it’s a paddle or some shit like that, I’ll hit you in the fucking head with it.”

“Frightening.” She walks to a bookshelf. “Anyhow, I keep those in my lab.”

Levi doesn’t reply, but he looks more relaxed than he did when he arrived, so she occupies herself looking through titles, mumbling, shaking her head, and tapping spines before she retrieves three of the most promising volumes. 

Hanji smiles as she sets them in Levi’s lap and tells him with her wink-not-wink, “These aren’t just brothel things.” 

He stares down at them, then up at her. “What is this shit?”

“They’re books, silly.”

“I fucking know that, you loon.”

It’s difficult to contain a giggle. “They’re about kinkery. No manuals, mind you, or directions. It’s fiction.”

Levi looks between Hanji and his lap, Hanji, lap, Hanji, lap before he lifts the top volume’s cover with his thumb and index finger as if the tome might befoul him. 

“That one has lots of leather in it. It’s about Lord Blacklock and his pet, Finlo.” She relaxes against her desk. “It’s a good read.”

“Why …?” Levi rubs his forehead. “Why do you have this shit?”

“Why not?” she says and points at the shelves lining her walls. “I read all kinds of things. You should expand your horizons.”

Levi looks like he’s about to tell her he should expand her face … with his foot, but he shakes his head and turns to a random page a quarter of the way in.

He has an odd expression, but he hasn’t thrown the book at her, so she retreats back to her desk.

Though she wants to chatter, Hanji stays mostly quiet, drinking her whiskey, the tip of her tongue between her teeth, only offering tidbits of information here and there as Levi browses. He doesn’t explore them as long as she’d like, but in the end, he folds like a starchy sheet.

“I’m only borrowing this one,” he says, shaking a small leather-bound book over her desk.

“Oh, that’s a good one. I was hoping you’d choose it,” she says. “Think of it as research.”

“Just this _one_ ,” he says, but she counts it as a victory. 

It might be the shortest and the most innocuous, but it’s the sweetest and the one she most hoped he’d pick. Not that she tells Levi that as she bids him good night.

After Hanji locks her door, she is rather impressed with herself. She retreats to her chair, swings her feet up and plants them on her disorderly desk, downs the remains of her whiskey, and then folds her hands behind her head. If she leans back any farther, she’ll tip. 

Her journal is open and staring at her. She has room to draw a short ornery stick figure spanking a taller and less grouchy stick figure right below a Paradis-shaped coffee stain.

She snickers into her office. Tempting as it is, she promised she wouldn’t say a word, and that includes not telling her personal notebook that her two favorite idiots are on what she hopes is the brink of discovering a new fetish.


	8. Chapter Seven: Deliberatus

The small leather-bound book in Levi’s hand is the one Hanji said he would feel least inclined to stab. He’s still skeptical. 

The other two were cheap and reviling. In the first, he only needed to see a few lines depicting a submissive’s forehead pressed to his inamorato’s shoe while referring to him as “My Lord,” and he shut it. 

The second focused on strange restrainment tackle too disturbingly reminiscent of their harnesses. 

There’s no question Eren revels in being held down. He might appreciate his wrists fastened to the headboard if Levi were to suggest it. But the uniform leather pinches like teeth through clothing, and Levi shudders at the thought of it against bare skin. 

With a shake of his head, he decides unequivocally that suspending Eren by his gear from the ceiling is a bridge too far.

He turns the tome over, deposits it on the counter, and as Levi tends to do when he isn’t sure how to proceed or is unsettled, brews Gunpowder. 

He stretches his back. Though he rose at four, the hours weigh on his shoulders as though he hadn’t slept at all. He squandered the day ruminating, contemplating, and behind his eyelids, he’s watched a brawl between four facets of himself since he sent Eren off at six in the morning. 

As Levi anticipated, apple cake, birthday presents, and before-bed reading weren’t enough to fend off Eren’s sleep terrors. He gnashed his teeth and thrashed and blubbered, and Levi held him until he woke and wept some more. 

When his breathing had slowed, and his sobs quieted, Eren’s red-rimmed eyes caught Levi’s with the same woeful expression they did on that pivotal night in January.

“Levi, can—”

Levi didn’t allow Eren to finish before he tugged him closer and slung him across his thighs. 

“This?” he asked, his hand settled on Eren’s arse.

Eren nodded into his forearms and sniffled, “Please.”

He seemed more miserable and faraway than he had the first time, and as Levi pushed up Eren’s nightshirt and stroked his sweaty skin, he once again cursed the regression earlier that day. 

Walking Eren’s spine, Levi’s fingers stilled when they met the waist of his drawers. He slipped the tips beneath the fabric as he contemplated removing them, though thought better of it when another plea didn’t come. 

Instead, he smoothed the frown above Eren’s closed eyes, clicked his tongue, and admonished Eren that by his count, he had left three cake crumbs on the sheets when he tidied the bed.

This time, for a reason Levi still cannot pinpoint, he hit him longer and harder too. Gingerly enough, he doubts it more than stung, but with a force that left the soft slaps of his hand echoing. 

Try as he does to ignore it, he can’t deny the sound was entrancing. Similar to the pleasing wash of rain pelting a window or the anchoring exhale of Eren’s restful sleeping breaths. 

Afterward, while in Levi’s arms—the cracking pitch that despair brings, lost from his voice—Eren brought up the idea of not asking in the future.

The fire crackles, and Levi watches its flickering light dance across their hearthside chairs. 

For them both, last night was different than before, and since then, Levi’s frustration at failing to unravel the mystery of why has felt like a corkscrew winding into his back. 

He brooded and pondered and ground his jaw, and when he couldn’t take his solitary pacing anymore, Levi fled his too-quiet quarters and found himself wandering to Hanji’s.

Levi stares at the book she lent him as he pours his tea. He reads the cover, _Secrets Inside the Castle Walls, by Welsa Ebster_ , and rolls his eyes.

Reluctant to delve into the apparent waste of precious paper, yet resolved to do something—anything—he grasps it with a grumble and sits before the hearth. He’s going to be alone and likely sleepless for the night anyhow.

He sniffs its binding, the pigment-stained edges of the pages. It isn’t moldering and doesn’t smell too bad—more like mid to high-grade leather and delicate parchment. Surprisingly, there doesn’t appear to be dust, considering who gave it to him, and though clearly read several times, it’s in decent condition for what Hanji must have acquired second, third, or even fourth-hand. 

Under different circumstances, Levi would start at the beginning, though besides the fact this story probably contains intolerable storytelling, he’s reading purely for research. It’s a simple investigation. 

Inside, he finds the tale of Vitali and Cecilio. “Ludicrous,” he mutters. Hanji would read a book with such pretentiously named characters. Still, it looks like he’ll spend less time cringing than if he had chosen the volume about Lord Blacklock or the one with the masked man and his odd suspension contraptions. 

He forces his eyes adherence to the book for a page before he scoffs at the tedious descriptions of Cecilio’s luxurious velvet cape followed by another chronicling Vitali’s gold and sapphire choker. 

With a quiet groan, he escapes to chapter three.

It only takes reading a few more sections before the reason for Hanji’s enthusiastic recommendation becomes apparent. Cecilio, twenty years Vitali’s senior and former Legate, is also his dominant lover. 

A conjured vision of Hanji cackling in her office forms—head threw back, teeth exposed, her arm around her stomach. Levi can hear her mad screeching. Lunatic that she is, she’s likely betting it will _enhance_ his and Eren’s sex life, which she surely must think is _boring_ —as she so often informs Levi he is. 

He’s tempted to slam the book shut and stomp back to her quarters so he can slap her across the face with it, but closes his eyes and exhales. 

“Nutty bitch.”

Despite his irritation, Hanji wouldn’t suggest studying this merely to mock him, and though she’s inclined to prankishness and relishes riling Levi, this involves Eren. 

Levi sips his tea, scratches his forehead, and begins scanning chapter five. Through the syrupy purple of flowery descriptions, he discovers within a few sentences that Vitali enjoys not only wearing bloomers, but half a page down it is dramatically revealed in a block of the loquacious narrative he also wears an excessively tight, ruffled corset. 

“Maria,” Levi whispers as an uninvited image of Eren in the described ensemble shoots like an arrow through his mind. 

He shakes it away and continues through his horrified shiver. 

_These aren’t just brothel things_ , he hears Hanji say. 

Levi was a perceptive child, so if more extreme kinkery went on in his mother’s brothel, it was well hidden. During his time in the Underground, he knew where the darker whorehouses were, though, with no interest in purchasing sex or emptying his purse for a beating, he never paid them much mind. 

What Hanji said is accurate, and he isn’t a moron. He’s heard all manner of talk in the barracks, in pubs, and on the streets too. Kinkery’s not only practiced in bordellos; it happens in private bedrooms, in hidden corners, or maybe in secluded forest spots for all he knows. Still, it’s not easy to disentangle from prostitution no matter how hard he tries to tell himself what he and Eren are doing isn’t the same. Worse yet, he wonders if Eren will find a similar tie. 

Eren’s not naïve, but Levi suspects his single-focused fury and purpose has in some ways sheltered him. He knows what a brothel is, and upon hearing cries and the snaps of whips, he’s frowned at that wicked house of ill repute when Levi has taken him to buy black-market tea. Though he’s not sure if Eren has a full understanding of what goes on in Everard’s other business across the alley from his shop. 

“These aren’t just brothel things,” Levi repeats to himself and resolves to continue skimming. 

It’s soon clear that where sex and relationship dynamics are concerned, like Eren, Vitali tends toward the submissive. In truth, Vitali more than _tends._ Conversely, Vitali takes far more pain than Levi has even considered giving Eren, and unlike Eren, he seems as delicate as a spring violet.

Despite the intense potency of Eren’s strength, he’s often angry, driven by fierce emotions, and tends to descend into bewildered and volatile tears. But he also craves to be held and comforted. And sometimes he begs for Levi to fuck him very gently, though he’s more rugged and durable than this coddle-needy, bedazzled doormat— _Vitali_. 

Eren would explode from confusion if Levi gifted him with a gem-encrusted choker. 

Levi pinches the bridge of his nose. Perhaps he should have grabbed the bottle of whiskey from Hanji. She’d deserve to be without it, and he deserves more for entertaining this. 

Regardless of his annoyance, Levi makes himself more comfortable. He sips his tea, tugs the armchair blanket over his lap, and proceeds headfirst into the rubbish. 

The plot is rather tedious, entailing long stretches of Vitali brooding in a courtyard garden while Cecilio observes him from afar, watching for missteps as he plans their engagements. He ponders what manner of discipline he’ll use, whether Vitali will be allowed release, and what the castle’s kitchen staff should prepare for dinner. That theme seems oddly irrelevant, and after reading in excruciating detail about braised duck and all its trimmings, Levi’s already exhausted by the dull narratives. 

At times, he reads ten pages in a row, then moves two chapters ahead. On other occasions, he finds himself going backward or skimming a page only to furiously search for something helpful, all the while uncertain of what he’s even looking for.

Chapter nine looks as though it could provide possible insight. So, he stands and cracks his joints, gnaws on a leftover sausage as more Gunpowder brews, and then undeterred, heads back into the fray. 

Lurid and explicit as the section is, it provides more valuable information than anything Levi’s found in the rest of the volume. 

Vitali is so tormented by his personal demons and the price of the past war that his terror and trauma come to a stormy head as he breaks several of Cecilio’s rules and then throws a glorious tantrum. 

The climax is a smutty exposition involving a stunningly long spanking, the use of a cane, a cock ring, and various phallic-shaped objects before Vitali receives his eventual reward for a punishment well taken. Toward the conclusion, Levi finds himself reading and rereading Cecilio’s wayward thoughts as he holds Vitali post-fuck and consoles him to sleep.

_Dark is the misery of the heart that desires to be entwined with the harrowing of the flesh, and yet, it can be the salvation of the bedeviled._

_Salvation,_ Levi thinks as he closes the book and looks at the clock. 

Maybe that’s what Eren’s looking for.

Puzzling over what to do, Levi considers the tawdry tale. It’s by Vitali’s choice and his desire, but he’s Cecilio’s ‘slave.’ Levi doesn’t have an issue with control nor at times bossing Eren about, but he does that to everyone, and he has no inclination for Eren to join him in his quarters only for his use. 

Vitali performs fellatio on his knees at Cecilio’s command and relishes the depravity. Though he’s gotten quite good at it, Levi would never demand Eren suck him off. 

Cecilio forbids Vitali to touch himself without his permission. 

Levi shakes his head and nearly wheezes. Eren would struggle not to break that rule every day if Levi enforced it. Besides, Levi suspects Eren requires a regular assuaging wank to keep his pants loose most days. He’s barely sixteen, and he deserves the indulgence if it’s what he needs. 

Vitali calls Cecilio ‘Legate’ during their sadomasochistic trysts—which sometimes go on for days. Eren calls Levi ‘Captain’ or ‘Sir’ in the field or during work hours, but once they cross into private space, he drops the titles and honorifics and calls Levi by his name. Levi’s not sure how he’d react if Eren were to whisper _Captain …_ in his ear while they were intimate. 

Levi was doubtful before, but Hanji thought reading this tripe would soothe his worries. 

He fans the pages. Regardless of where her motivations lie, she isn’t ill-willed. And perhaps she was a little bit right.

There are many _absolutely not’s_ contained within _Secrets Inside the Castle Walls_ , and Levi could never be as smooth nor commanding as Cecilio, but the choker … with its purpose modified, may work. 

Vitali’s might represent a sort of sexual bondage, but that doesn’t dictate something for Eren would require the same meaning. Even now, Levi’s still not sure whether what’s been happening with Eren is sexual or not. 

Sometimes afterward, they make love, but it’s to comfort Eren. And because as much as Eren requires Levi to soothe any lingering misery, Levi needs to feel him breathing against him and listen for his sniffles morphing to consoled whimpers. 

It’s never been because the spankings gave either of them an erection. 

Running a hand through his hair, Levi tries to think. Even if he could afford such an item, he doubts Eren would wish for tacky gem-mantled gold tickling his Adam’s apple. Eren is simple, and in retrospect, his request isn’t as concerning nor complicated as Levi believed three hours before. 

A necklace of some sort still may be suitable. It would be easy for Eren to take on and off, and if Levi’s honest, as much as he dislikes what that key he used to wear represents, he’s lately found himself missing more and more how an adornment looks around Eren’s neck. 

Purchasing something is a notion Levi brushes off right away. Neither does he own any jewelry he could give Eren. There’s a charm in a box in his bureau that rarely sees the light. It was his mother’s. Though small and tarnished, it’s all he has left of her. Besides how inappropriate it is that his unhelpful and uncooperative mind drifted to it now, for innumerable reasons, that wouldn’t be fitting at all. 

Levi stands. He paces again. He has to make something. He must make it now. He taps his temple, summoning an inventory of what he owns. 

He has thin yarn for darning socks, but that would be flimsy. Perhaps ugly. The extra fabric for patches is stored in his footlocker, but what could he fashion with that?

His pacing speeds. His knuckles meet his head with a tad more force. 

“There must be something …”

He tugs his hair, and as though the action provided divine wisdom, he strides to his closet. 

Hidden behind his uniform dress coat in a dark corner is one of his oldest daggers hanging from a hook. 

He thrusts the clothing aside, and without a glance, he grasps it. 

Levi brings it to his kitchen table and sits. This was the first knife he bought himself. It’s nothing exorbitant, but it’s served him well and saved his life on more than one occasion. Its handle is wrapped in worn leather that no longer looks pretty, but it grips better than the day he set down five sterlings for it.

He pulls it from its sheath and scrapes his nail with its edge. Still keen. 

At the end of its handle is a piece of leather cording. It was one aspect of the blade that attracted Levi when he purchased it. In the Underground, he never knew when he would have to use it or who would lurch out of the shadows. When he was an adolescent, Levi had yet to master the skill of carrying a blade in his sleeve, and the strap at the dagger’s end was suitable for wrapping around his wrist, lest his blade ever be knocked too far in a fight. 

Unfastening it from the dagger, Levi nips his lip. This idea is beyond compare. The cording is soft and pliable from use, and its faded walnut color will compliment the tone of Eren’s skin and hair. 

It only needs one more detail. Levi looks around his quarters. There’s nothing he could hang from it, it’s too thick to string a button on, and he has no beads or similar items. 

He stares at a kink in the leather. It lies right in the center. A decorative knot would mask the imperfection. But what kind?

Something that won’t consume too much of the length. Nothing overly ornate. A Turk’s head bead would be small and simple, yet too ordinary. A Savoy knot isn’t complicated enough, and there isn’t enough room for an oblong knot … but a cloverleaf … 

In spite of the Gunpowder’s caffeine, Levi finds himself in bed shortly after one in the morning. Hanji’s strange book is propped against his thighs, and Eren’s necklace is draped across his bent knees. He stares at it, his index finger twitching inches from it, defying his orders for his hands to calm. 

He tilts his head, scrutinizing the _leaf_ at its center, picturing it in green. It’s been a while since he tied one, but it’s crafted perfectly—an honest yet deceptively intricate adornment. 

It’s much like Eren, who seems forthright to perhaps a fault from the outside. On the surface, Eren’s a dedicated soldier. Driven. A true friend. Intense. Loving. Emotional. Expressive. _Readable_. But Levi knows there’s more when you dive a thousand feet down. 

Beneath the outer layers, he’s as beautifully complicated as what Levi created. Eren has his secrets. Levi can feel them. There have been moments he’s heard Eren utter his impressions and feelings as profoundly as a philosopher, but Levi knows there’s more behind his eyes than he may ever discover. 

_For now,_ he thinks, the tip of his finger grazing the knot. Knowing Eren, whether he decides to use this token or not, it will become _special_ and _important_.

Not that Levi’s bestowed Eren with much—a handkerchief, a pair of winter socks that were too big for Levi, a couple tins of tea before Eren stretched out in his quarters nearly every night, a birthday trinket box—but there’s not one item he hasn’t beamed over. 

Despite this, due to the nature of this treasure, Levi fears Eren may reject it. 

It could be going too far. Too presumptuous. It’s like presenting someone with a ring or other binding bauble. 

He batters Eren’s pillow, abusing it into shape how Eren does and pulls the quilt to his chin. 

Eyes tired, he stares at the book, contemplating reading further or finding a route toward sleep when there’s a knock, and it further kindles his over-sensitized nerves. 

Unless there was an emergency, Eren or Hanji are the only ones who would come calling at such a late hour, and Hanji’s knocks are far louder and manic than this. 

Levi puts on his dressing gown in case he’s mistaken and stuffs Eren’s necklace into his pocket. He hides Hanji’s book in the chess table drawer as he passes through the sitting area and then opens the door. 

Eren leans against the frame, his hair a mess, a crooked shit-eating grin on his face. 

“Hey,” he says, minty breath enveloping Levi like a fog. “Did I wake you?”

“What do you think?” says Levi. “You brushed your teeth.”

Eren shrugs as he steps inside. “You hate beer breath.”

“Mm.” Levi moves to the kitchenette and sets the kettle to boil. “You could use tea.”

“Sounds good,” Eren says, moving up behind Levi, wrapping his arms around his waist. “I’m not drunk.”

_Bullshit,_ Levi thinks.

Not that Eren’s libido is anything less than demanding on a regular day, but it tends to increase after a few drinks. Levi shakes his head. Horny little shit. “You’re _something_.”

“A little buzzed,” Eren whispers into Levi’s hair. “I missed you all day.”

Levi glances at the wall clock. “You saw me eight hours ago.”

“Felt longer.” He kisses Levi’s cheek, then the back of his neck. “Is it all right if I stay here tonight?” 

“If you snore too loudly, I’ll bake you in the hearth.”

“I’ll try to be quiet,” Eren says close to Levi’s ear. “Thanks.”

Levi isn’t sure if it’s the alcohol or the evening, but Eren feels needy. Whether it’s for simple contact or more, he’s pressed against the length of Levi’s body, holding him tight, nuzzling his nose and cheek against Levi’s undercut. He loosens Eren’s arms, turns, and peers at his eyes. They’re bright, crinkled at the corners, and he wears a barely visible smirk that Levi’s aware he’s trying to control. 

“Was it a good time?” Levi asks, fixing the fringe over Eren’s brow. Hanji was right; he looks better today. 

“It wasn’t bad. You should have come.” 

“Tch. And babysit all you brats?” 

“What did you do?” Eren asks. 

Levi chews his cheek. “I checked in on four-eyes. Shared some whiskey. That was enough excitement.”

“Hah! You can’t criticize,” Eren says, “you drank too.”

“I don’t get drunk.” Levi flicks Eren’s ear. “I’m not criticizing either. You’re sixteen, you should see your friends. Get looped once in a while. Live.”

“It’s fun sometimes,” Eren says, “but I like it better here. It’s quiet.”

“And dull.”

“No, it’s not,” Eren says. “It’s peaceful. Even when you have to do shitty paperwork.” 

“I darned that hole in your sock.”

“Thanks.” Eren smiles. He reaches over Levi’s shoulder. “Water’s ready. Oolong?”

If there was any question of Eren’s mood, it’s answered when they move to the bedroom. He strips down to nothing, leaving his clothes where they fall before he slips into bed. 

If Eren were pleading for the distraction again, Levi would spank him and claim he was punishing him for the mess. And he’d be tempted to make it hurt a little this time.

“Sleepy brat,” he says and folds Eren’s pants and shirt. He tosses his drawers and socks in the basket and then settles under the covers beside him. “Lost your manners in your tankard of ale?”

“Wasn’t thinking,” Eren says. “Forgive me?”

There could be a plethora of reasons why Eren wasn’t thinking. It’s a toss-up whether the cause is good or bad. Levi turns his head. Eren’s staring at him, the dimple in his left cheek deepening. Despite the bratty, barely visible smirk returning, Levi drags his knuckles down Eren’s jaw. He grasps his chin and turns his head, examining him. It will keep Eren quiet for the six seconds it will take Levi to determine if he’s in despair or giddy.

“Your hair is shiny,” Eren says, twisting a lock around his finger.

“Drunk brat.” Levi blows Eren’s fringe from his face. “Your’s is a mess. There’s a comb in your bathroom and in mine.”

“I’m not _drunk_! My cheeks are a little warm. Throat too, but I’m not drunk. I have incredible tolerance.”

Levi snorts. “Better than Hanji’s.”

“We met up with Jean too. He had as much as me, and he could barely walk. I hope his head hurts tomorrow.” He snickers. “Armin was singing!”

“And Mikasa?” 

“Sober as a stone,” Eren says. “I don’t think she had much. She was pretending. Keeping an eye on us … on me.”

“Overbearing,” Levi says. “It’s not out of malice.”

“It’s annoying.”

“You passed out yesterday,” Levi says. “Give her a few days. She’ll get the fuck over it.”

“At least it’s the weekend.” Eren snuggles closer, fingers trailing Levi’s chest and stomach before they halt beneath his navel and scratch at the hair there. “You tired?”

Levi lifts an amused brow. “You’re not,” he says when Eren’s erection presses against his thigh.

“I want to kiss you.”

“I’m not stopping you.”

Eren is warm. His kisses are sloppier than most nights, but he’s smiling against Levi’s lips, playfully biting, and going by the contractions in his back’s muscles and stomach, he’s trying to repress his laughter. 

He nips at Levi’s chin, holding the skin between his teeth before he blinks at Levi and touches the tips of their noses together.

Eren’s already panting. His breath still smells of peppermint. “Can I fuck you?” 

“Sure you’re up to the task?” Levi pinches his hip. “You seem tipsy.”

“I can still fuck.”

“How much did you have tonight?”

Eren kisses his ear, his big hand grasping Levi’s arse. “Three or four pints.”

Eren has a tendency to rile himself up and go fast on top. Not that Levi has a complaint. 

As his own cock begins to fill, he hides his smirk in the crook of Eren’s neck. _Three or four_ never fails to slow Eren down to perfection. 

He pulls Eren closer and wraps a leg over his thighs. “Oil’s still under your pillow.”


	9. Chapter Eight: Donum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to update last week, but decided against it. I've had fire under my fingers for drafting the last couple weeks, and since we're nearing a turning point in the story (three more chapters after this one and we've concluded what I think of as the first arc) I wanted to hold this one in hand for a week longer than planned in case there were any tiny details that needed adjusting. 
> 
> I'm not typically one who leaves chapter notes aside from at the beginning, but I do want to thank all the lovely readers both new and those who've been with me for a while. Especially considering, I've veered a bit from my usual path. And extra thanks to those of you who have been kind enough to leave me your insights and feedback. I've truly enjoyed our discussions and hope to have more. 
> 
> And without keeping you further, have a chapter from Eren. <3

Eren sits at the table, trying in earnest to adjust his pants. 

Serving their toast, Levi looks at him funny. The quizzical expression remains when he sits and slides over the blackberry jam. “Why are you fidgeting?” he asks, nodding toward the bedroom. “Go take care of it if you need to.”

“It’s not that.” Eren groans and rests his forehead in his hand. “You took my underwear. It feels funny without them.”

“I didn’t take them. They’re in the basket,” Levi says, “and that’s what you get for leaving them on the fucking floor.”

Pulling at his pant legs, Eren contemplates snatching his skivvies from the pile of soiled clothes but stops himself. He doesn’t want to imagine Levi’s reaction. “My balls. My—my penis!” he stammers as he tries to rearrange everything. “Nothing’s sitting right.”

“Tch.” Levi butters his toast, seemingly unsympathetic to the plight of Eren’s genitals. “Learn to pick up after yourself, and your dick will thank you.”

“You aren’t concerned about it?”

“No,” Levi says, wiping crumbs from his fingers. 

“You were concerned with it last night.” 

Levi samples his tea, and Eren knows he’s trying to hide his gratified amusement behind it. He’s probably laughing in that Levi way that makes no sound. Like he can breathe his mirth into his cup. Slick bastard. 

“You’re welcome to go to your room and fetch clean drawers.”

“No. No, it’s okay.” That’s not their routine. When Eren leaves in the morning, he doesn’t return until the evening. Going now and coming right back would be odd. 

He shakes his head and digs into his breakfast. Admittedly, the fabric of his pants which is usually comfortable throughout the day, is like sandpaper on his delicate parts. The seam is sawing nastily at his scrotum, and his ding-dong isn’t sure whether it wants to go left or right, but he’s starving, and he was the arsehole who drunkenly scattered his clothes on Levi’s polished floor. 

He mutters a “sorry” between a bite of toast and a sip of Assam. 

“You could keep an extra pair here.”

He doesn’t mean for it to happen, but Eren’s mouth hangs open, full of chewed food. 

He swallows it all in a painful gulp. 

“I can keep one here?”

“No,” Levi says, “I said so for my health.” 

They wouldn’t fit in his trinket box, and everything in Levi’s quarters has its place. “Where should I put them?”

“The bottom drawer of my bureau is empty.” Levi frowns at his tea. Like there’s a tricky loose leaf hiding below its surface. 

Eren doesn’t respond. Eren doesn’t blink. He watches Levi’s fingertip skate around his cup’s rim before he looks at him.

Levi’s so kind. It makes his chest go warm and mushy. He was an arse last night, dropping his things everywhere, but Levi offered him a drawer for spare underwear. An _entire_ drawer. 

“Levi …?”

“There’s room for more. A change of clothes. A nightshirt too.” Levi averts his eyes to his dish before they meet Eren’s. “This way, you won’t run into this problem again.”

“A whole change of clothes,” Eren mumbles. He’s already wondering which nightshirt and pair of pants to choose—whether he should gather casual slacks or what he wears during the week. Maybe Levi would even let him bring over two pairs of socks so he won’t stink up their chess matches after a long day on his feet. Then he wouldn’t have to retreat to his cold room to freshen himself up or change. 

He bites back his grin. He might be getting ahead of himself. 

“Sure they won’t be in the way?” he asks.

Levi’s knuckles tap the table. “Added a bag of cedar chips this morning.”

There are flutters in Eren’s stomach like leaves in the breeze. 

Close as he feels to Levi, as at home as Eren is in these quarters, he never dared to imagine Levi would let him squeeze so far into the private sanctuary beyond the bedroom door he now glances at. 

Eren’s naked toes curl against the floorboards. His cheeks are warm. The flutters swoop to his chest. Levi looks so beautiful, glancing at him from under his fringe, his slim eyebrow cocked, a crumb on his lip, and although it’s childish, Eren wants to vault across the table and tackle Levi and just hang on. 

_A pouch of Levi’s homemade cedar chips._

He takes a breath. “I’ll be tidy. I’ll put my clothes where they belong.”

Levi doesn’t say anything, but his lips twitch into a Levi-smile as he nudges Eren’s shin before adding jam to his toast. 

They eat and drink, and other than crunching, Eren’s slurping, and the tapping and clinking of cutlery against china, Levi’s quarters are uncharacteristically silent. 

Levi pokes his feet and his shins, and under his occasional scrutiny, Eren attempts not to squirm in his seat. It’s true, he’s not comfortable, and as much as he cherishes the early hours with Levi before he has to flee to his own room, pants sans drawers are near intolerable. More importantly, he has clothes to look through.

He tries yet fails to hide a smile, and in mimicry of Levi, attempts to send his happiness into his teacup before—while bumping his legs—he plunges back into breakfast.

In the hush, every time Levi opens his mouth, Eren expects one of his signature dry wisecracks or jokes. He wonders if his quietude this morning is some sort of mock punishment for not tidying his clothes—Levi staring at him over bread or his cup with each sip or bite. It’s as if he’s waiting to see how long it will take for Eren to stand, toss off his pants, and go stomping—bare arsed, his general and two colonels swinging—to his room in dire need of softer fabric against his precious skin.

Despite offering him the drawer, Levi knows what has Eren fiddling, and there’s no doubt watching him writhe is entertaining. Probably because Eren stubbornly insists on enduring the discomfort. 

Still, it seems like there is something else too. 

A fine slice breaches Levi’s veneer. Like a narrow fissure on the surface of ebonite. His expression gives nothing away, but as Eren chews and flicks his eyes hesitantly in his direction, it’s as though he’s watching spider-silk threads crack a layer that was strong as steel the day before. 

It can’t be that Levi’s irritated about Eren’s drunken impertinence last evening. If that were the case, he wouldn’t have offered Eren his very own spot in his refuge. 

Whatever it is, Levi prefers to keep it to himself. 

Eren frowns at the butter and twiddles his thumbs. He’s learned how to speak _Levi_ a bit over these months, but Levi can still be weird and unreadable. Sometimes in the evenings, when chess is over, and they sit without words by the fire, Eren observes Levi, but trying to unravel him is like hoping to see him through a wall. 

Perhaps he’s rethinking his earlier invitation. Regretting it. Maybe he envisions Eren filling up his dresser with untidily folded clothes or thinks they will attract moths or worse.

Shoving his last piece of bread in his mouth, Eren rolls up his sleeves and then rises with his empty plate and china to take them to the sink. When he reaches for Levi’s, his hand is paused by the soft sweep of fingers. 

“I’ll wash them today,” Levi says.

“I’ll dry then.”

“No.”

Levi must truly want to take back his offer. Eren tugs at his collar. “I guess … um, I’ll just be going then.”

“No,” says Levi again. “Sit.”

And sit Eren does. 

“Not there.” As Levi rises, his fingers slip through Eren’s hair in a fashion uncharacteristic. 

Eren turns and glances at the two seats before the hearth. 

“The bedroom,” Levi says and strides past him, pausing at its threshold. “Sit on the bed.”

Though Eren complies, he chews his lip. Is Levi going to lecture him about clothes? Will he give him instructions? Will he demonstrate in a painfully precise lesson how to deposit them in the laundry bin or how to fold them? 

“I should go soon,” Eren says as he grasps Levi’s pillow and holds it in his lap. It would serve as a good shield and something soft to hug if Levi’s going to give him the what-for. 

“Fuck that for now.” Levi seats himself beside him. His left hand is in his pocket, and Eren imagines there’s probably a knife in it. Levi always has a knife. He even keeps three in the bathroom. At least three that Eren knows of. 

“I’m sorry again about messing up your room.”

“Stop apologizing.” He flicks Eren’s ear and takes the pillow from him. “And stop looking so scared,” he adds, smoothing his thumb between Eren’s brows. “You’re not in trouble.”

“I’m not?” Eren asks, toying with his trousers again. “I can still bring my clothes?”

“I said you could,” Levi says, but Eren feels like once again, he’s frustrated him. “And no, you didn’t do anything wrong. Just shut the hell up for a fucking moment.”

“Okay.”

Levi brushes the hair from Eren’s face. The backs of his knuckles slide down his jaw. He kisses Eren below his ear, repeating in a whisper to be quiet. 

And how hard it is to be. 

Maybe it’s because Eren’s skin is more sensitive in the morning, or it could be because he needs to jerk off, but suddenly his pants that were intolerable moments before now also feel three sizes too small. Morning sex. He and Levi have never had the chance for it, and silly as it is—regardless, Levi would probably complain about bad breath and sweaty armpits, Eren has dreamed about it. He’s touched himself to the fantasy more times than he can recollect. 

Levi smells more like Levi in the morning too. He’s warmer, his eyelids hang just a touch lower, and his sleep-mussed hair is beautiful swept over his brow—orderly wild—and fuck. Eren can’t help but whimper. 

If it were nighttime, he’d already been asking _please_ and kissing Levi, but Levi’s entrancing fingers leave his skin, his lips abandon his cheek, so Eren covers his straining penis with the only thing he can—his arm.

Levi touches the back of his hand and glances at Eren’s crotch. “Forget about that thing for a second.”

Now Eren whines. 

“But—”

“The other night,” Levi begins. His hand is still fiddling in his pocket. “You said you didn’t want to ask.”

Eren wishes he had Levi’s pillow back so he could hide behind it. It’s the best shield Levi’s room provides. He looks around for something else. He could crawl under the covers or beneath the bed, but what purpose would it serve? Levi would just fish him out and tell him to stop being a nitwit.

“Oh, that …” Eren attempts to stay upright but holds himself, digging his fingers into his ribs. He didn’t plan to ask. He didn’t mean to say it, but as always, it just fell out of his mouth, ruining a tranquil moment. Like when a bird soars overhead and, at its most majestic, drops its gloppy shit on the daisies. 

He tries not to wriggle. “Are you going to do the thing?”

“Still can’t say it?” Levi asks. The tip of his finger holds up Eren’s chin.

“Do I have to?”

“No,” Levi says. “I wasn’t planning to spank you.”

Eren does his best not to flinch at the way Levi hardened that dreaded word. “I probably deserve it for the clothes,” he says, attempting to make it a joke. His forced wheeze is faint. 

“You probably do,” says Levi, “but I have something else for you.”

For a moment, Eren’s mind runs in frantic circles. A mix between visions of shoveling horse shit, polishing floors, dusting high corners, and then obscure flashes of punishments he can’t quite grasp. Something close to a spanking, but much worse.

“Give me your hand,” Levi says as he tugs Eren’s fingers from his waist. 

Levi’s hand covers his palm, and when it slides away, and Eren looks down, a length of leather cording is there with a curious knot in it. He’s never seen the likes of a knot like this before. 

He touches it. “This is pretty,” he says.

“It’s a cloverleaf knot.”

“What do I do with it?” Eren asks.

“It’s a necklace,” Levi says. He looks away to his side before he clears his throat and brings his attention back to Eren. “I made it for you.”

In the last two days, Levi’s given him a trinket box, a drawer in his dresser, and now a necklace. Eren’s been grousing and whining for months and keeping Levi up at night, ruining paperwork, making a mess, and now he gets gifts. 

Levi makes dinner and tea for him too, but this—it doesn’t look new. The leather is worn, but the knot seems freshly tied and conditioned. Levi wove this just for him. 

He doesn’t mean for it to escape. “For me.” 

“For you,” Levi says. He shifts. He’s not facing Eren, but his knees are touching his thigh. “So you don’t have to ask.”

He feels like an imbecile yet asks again. “What do I do with it?”

Taking a breath, Levi rubs his forehead. Eren must be doing that shit—being thickheaded, Levi calls it. Levi twists the end of the necklace around his finger, where it’s trailing over Eren’s thigh. 

“When you want me to do … the _thing_ —spank you—you wear it.” He pushes the hair from Eren’s eyes like he always does when Eren’s feeling bashful. “Then I’ll know, and you won’t have to ask me.”

“Oh,” Eren says. He can feel his worry slipping away in a wash of warmth. Regardless he had a good time the night before; he drank more than he planned at the scratching fear of what he said the eve before that. Fleeting feelings that made his face hot every time the memory surfaced, leaving him wishing he could go back and never say it at all. 

He finds the tiniest smile when his eyes meet Levi’s. “Am I supposed to put it on myself or ask you to do it?”

Levi frowns for a moment. So quick, Eren almost misses it. “That’s up to you.”

“Um …” he strokes the leather, pokes Levi’s index finger with his own. A bubbly feeling expands in his chest. Like when he drinks his ale too fast, but it settles as if he was meant to fill his belly with it. 

“Can you put it on me? Right now?” he says, pausing. “Not to do anything, but I want to see what it looks like.”

There are times Levi looks at Eren like he is one of the lumbering boats that travel from district to district along the rivers and careen against the port. Occasionally, when they dock, water sloshes over everyone onshore and on the deck. The ships jostle and sway. But when the shock of the impact has subsided, people close their shocked mouths and push their soggy hair from their faces. Then they gather their belongings and disembark as if they weren’t drenched.

Levi swallows. He smiles one of his Levi-smiles that isn’t a smile but is, holds his hand out, and shifts on the bed behind Eren. 

“Give it,” he says. His knees are planted beside Eren’s hips, and Eren knows he’s standing on them because he can feel Levi’s aura above him, behind him like a home’s walls. Strange considering Levi rarely towers over him, but Eren hangs onto the feeling, absorbing it like the summer sun’s first hot rays. 

Levi grasps Eren’s right shoulder. “Move this hair. Don’t want to pull it.”

When Eren tugs the strands to either side, he feels Levi’s breath stir the fine hairs on his neck. It’s not close. Not like when they’re in bed, and Levi’s lips almost touch his skin, but rather a teasing breeze. 

Eren’s heart flips at how gentle it is as Levi reaches into the spaces between his head and his arms. His skin brushes Eren’s wrists, and he doesn’t dare swallow yet. Eren doesn’t even breathe. 

There’s a tickle on his nape. He assumes it’s Levi fastening the necklace with a knot simpler, yet just as sure as the one he now feels settling against the hollow of his neck. 

“There,” Levi says. 

He fixes Eren’s hair with a prolonged touch to his nape before leaving the bed to stand before him. His fingertips sweep along Eren’s clavicles and meet to rest at the top of his chest. “It fits.”

Eren touches his neck. Of course, it fits. Levi made it for him. 

He can feel his flush. “I want to see,” he says before heading to the bathroom mirror. 

The floor is cold against his bare feet, but he ignores it and sparks the lantern in the washroom. 

His hair is a mess, his cheeks are red. Despite his accelerated healing, last night’s shenanigans have left his face drawn, and there is a spot on his shirt where beer froth dripped the evening before. Though Levi’s necklace … it seems to erase all the imperfections. 

He watches the knot move in the dip below his throat as he breathes. He’s dressed, but somehow, the necklace completes him. Like he was naked before. As if something was missing and Levi’s token was always meant to be there. 

Levi comes up behind him, and he catches his eyes in the mirror. Eren swallows just to watch how the leather moves against his skin. 

He’s felt like a dumbarse for the last day. Wondering to himself why he said it. Wanting to take it back. But now … 

He thrusts his way past the remembered agony and through the subsequent embarrassment of the recollection. 

After Levi read him to sleep and Eren awoke from his nightmares crying, Levi made him feel so protected. He dispelled the storm raging inside. Once Eren had calmed, he began to ask Levi for it—for the _thing_ —, but Levi didn’t let him finish. 

He threw him over his lap with an ease that left Eren feeling like he weighed a mere five pounds. In comparison to that abruptness, Levi’s touch had been so gentle—one hand stroking Eren’s back while—still weepy—, Eren hid his face in the bed. And when Levi reached beneath the waist of his drawers, how desperately Eren wanted him to pull them down so he could feel Levi’s skin on his. But his head was still reeling, and he couldn’t make a sound, let alone squeak another, _please._

Afterward, all Eren could think was that he always wanted it like that—Levi commanding and vigilant. Levi taking it out of his hands and deciding what he needed, and then giving it to him. 

By last evening, Eren thought Levi would have forgotten his request; words mumbled into Levi’s shoulder as Eren fell back to sleep. Never did he think his wish would result in Levi gifting him something so special. So beautiful. Something just for him. 

Just for them. 

Releasing a huge breath, Eren meets Levi’s eyes again. He loves it. “Thank you.”

“Mm.” Levi’s shoulders lift a fraction. “It’s just an old piece of leather.”

“But it’s from you.” Eren faces him.

“It is.”

“I wish I could wear it all the time.”

Levi wipes a crumb from Eren’s cheek. “I don’t think you want a spanking in the courtyard or in the mess during lunch.”

“No!” It’s teasing, but the idea is mortifying enough he covers his arse. He tries to hide his embarrassment with a snort. “It’s a perfect idea. The necklace, I mean.” He smiles. “Clever.” 

The lift at the corner of Levi’s mouth drops, and his lips settle into a thin line. Hands stuffed in his pockets, he shuffles back to the bedroom and sits at the edge of the bed. 

Eren follows, frowning. He sits beside him. Levi looks at Eren, then his lap, then Eren again. He runs a hand through his hair. 

Then he opens his mouth but hesitates before he says, “It wasn’t completely my idea.”

“Huh?” Eren’s confused. “What do you mean?” He wants to ask what’s wrong because something clearly is. 

Levi stands and begins to pace between the hearth and the foot of the bed. His dressing gown billows like his cloak does when he rides. 

“Eren …” he starts. His hands fall to his sides. “Fuck … shit …”

“What?” asks Eren.

Levi kicks the bedpost. “Hanji gave me a fucking book.”

“It was Hanji’s idea?”

“No,” says Levi, “but she gave me a book. I got it from there.”

“Hanji …” Eren whispers.

“Shit fuck shit. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“Hanji …” Eren repeats as slow understanding slides like cold oil over his skin. It’s like being strapped to a wagon wheel and traveling down a hill, momentum increasing until the realization hits like a rock in the path. 

He shoots to his feet. “Hanji knows! About us. You told her?” He sinks back to the bed. Now he truly wants to hide under it. He mumbles into his palms, “She knows about the _thing_?” 

“I’m sorry,” Levi says. “It’s fine.”

Eren raises his face. He tries so hard to be mad at Levi, but he’s scared and so embarrassed he wants to go dig a hole outside and bury himself in it. “You could get in trouble, Levi. You’re—you’re … you’re my Captain. You’re …”

Levi crouches before Eren. He takes his flailing hands. “I’m older. Trust me, I’m well aware.” 

“They could send you away,” Eren says. He feels hot fury burn his eyes. “You’d be gone.”

“Tch.” Levi squeezes Eren’s knee. “They’re not sending me anywhere.”

“But now they know.”

Levi shakes his head. “Not _they_. Hanji knows. She’s not going to say anything or do anything. She already knew anyhow.”

Eren’s been careful to leave every morning before HQ buzzes. He’s given up cuddles and morning sex and shuffled away with his heart feeling heavy and alone. He’s sacrificed what he wants just to grasp the time he can selfishly have and hasn’t complained. He doesn’t swoon like he wants to when others speak of their loves. 

And when his fingers dig so hard into his palms at overheard criticism of Levi, he tries his hardest not to defend him too much. He’s never thrown a tantrum when someone calls Levi an arsehole or control-freak. 

He’s been so good.

“But … but we’ve been covert.”

“Nothing’s covert enough for Hanji,” Levi says. “She might be cuckoo and dance on my nerves, but that wingnut notices shit. She’s known me too long.”

“Yeah,” Eren says. He blows his nose. With his teary, snotty breakdown averted, he doesn’t need to be dripping all over. “You’ve known her a long time.”

“Trusted her for a long time, too,” Levi says. “She was the first of them after …”

“After your friends died?” 

Levi nods. He wipes Eren’s damp cheeks. “Isabel and Farlan.”

“You never told me about them before,” Eren says.

“Never was a reason to before,” Levi says. “It was a long time ago.”

Eren looks through the bedroom door toward the kitchenette. “The tea set.”

“Mm, yes,” Levi says. “Won it in a fight. Beats drinking tea from dented tin cups.”

“Farlan?” Eren asks. He isn’t sure if he’s being rude. Levi’s never been this open with him. Not so far. “Was he—were you two …?”

“Like us?” Levi asks.

Eren’s hand knots in his lap. Farlan was older than Eren is now. He knew Levi when he was a thug, and they probably killed people together and pulled off jobs. They must have been close. “Yeah.”

Levi purses his lips. “It wasn’t exactly the same,” he says, and as if to make certain Eren knows, he kisses him. It’s soft and tender, not deep, nor ravenous and wet, but his fingers tangle in his hair, and he nips Eren’s lips with all the attentive seriousness and finesse Levi’s kisses always have. 

He squeezes the back of Eren’s neck as he pulls away and looks him in the eyes. He puts a hand on the center of Eren’s chest, fingers skimming the cloverleaf knot. “I want you if you couldn’t already tell.”

Most of the time, the tears that sting Eren’s eyes are from anger or frustration, but sometimes they’re from contentment. 

Levi must truly love him. Nodding, he can only whisper, “You do like hugging me.”

“We fit good.”

“We do,” Eren says. It’s the most he’s going to get from Levi right now, and though he doesn’t want to rub Levi’s Levi-ish confession in his face, he grins. 

And then his mind meanders back to Hanji. 

“Does Hanji know about the other thing too?” 

Levi moves to the bed, grabbing Eren like a sack of grain, and situates them on the unmade sheets and quilts. He presses Eren’s head to his chest, lazily combing his hair.

“I didn’t tell her. I didn’t say it, but that loon figures everything out. Says she’s not a mind-reader, but she might as well be.”

“How long?” Eren asks. “How long has she known?”

He needs to know. He wonders how long it’s been since she’s been thinking whatever she thinks while he’s training or sitting in her office. Eren rubs his hand down his face. His skin bristles as he imagines the notes she’s written or the little pictures she’s drawn in her notebooks.

“I’ve no idea when she figured it out,” Levi says. “Knowing her, the day after I kissed you the first time.” He toys with his necklace around Eren’s neck, running his fingers along it, rolling the knot between his thumb and forefinger. “She gave me the book last night.”

Eren’s only known Levi to drink with Hanji when he’s bothered by something. He didn’t have plans with her—not that Eren knows of. Most times, Levi mentions those things. Like her baths, her troubles. He grumbles he has to _check in on_ four-eyes. He didn’t say anything to Eren when they woke or when he bid him goodbye after late afternoon tea. 

“When you had the whiskey,” he says. Levi will probably never admit it, but Eren says it anyway. “I worried you, didn’t I?”

“Sometimes, it’s easier to know what to do during a battle.”

“I’m sorry,” Eren says.

Levi holds him, and his kiss fills Eren with all the _don’t be sorry_ Levi doesn’t say. 

“Can I see the book?” Eren asks. 

Eren looks at the clock above Levi’s mantel. He’s been skimming through Hanji’s volume for fifteen minutes, and he’s already confounded, shocked, and a touch bewildered. 

He scratches his head as Levi sits in his chair, drinking more tea, watching him. “My necklace,” Eren says, “it’s not like this, right?”

“No,” Levi says. “That thing Vitali wears means something different. Like Cecilio owns him, I suppose.”

“Right,” Eren says, “this is like …” He drifts off, frowning at the page he was reading while holding the cloverleaf knot.

“Your’s is like a signal,” Levi says.

“A signal,” Eren says, “yeah.” He flips through more pages and doesn’t even know what he’s reading about.

It’s graphic, so very explicit. There are dicks and things that aren’t dicks, but they’re shaped like dicks. There’s a whip of some sort, and more come than a real man could produce, and it’s all over the place. It’s in hair, on chins, some is on a wall, it flew out in _ropes,_ and all Eren can unwantedly imagine is pulling himself up a cliff while holding onto a thick string of tacky jism. He grimaces. It’s not real, it’s just a story, but his ears feel like he stuck his head in an oven. 

“Hanji,” starts Eren, “she doesn’t. She doesn’t think I’m like this guy, or you’re like the other one?” He looks at Levi, desperate for assurance. “I’m not like this guy?”

“Do you ever kneel on a velvet pillow at my feet?” Levi asks.

“No.”

“Have I ever forbidden you clothing?”

Eren shakes his head. Not that he minds being naked, and he really doesn’t mind being naked with Levi. Being naked with Levi means baths or cuddles or fucking. It means touching his skin with all of his own. It means sticking his sweaty self to Levi and feeling like they’re fused together. Forever. That they’re one thing instead of two. 

“Do you think I’d ever order you to eat strawberries off my junk?”

“No!” The resounding clap echoes when Eren slams the book shut. Strawberries haven’t yet been in season since he’s been with Levi, but that’s beside the point.

Levi crosses his legs with a mild smirk. He sips his tea. “It’s a rubbish story.”

“Why does Hanji have this?”

“Asked her the same thing,” Levi says. He sets his cup down and plants his chin on his hand. He stares at the corner. “Claimed she reads lots of different shit.”

“But this …” Eren says. He almost puts the book on the chess table, but it feels as though it will taint it. Defile it. He doesn’t want it in his lap either. 

Levi seems to be aware of his quandary and opens the drawer. “Toss it in there. I’ll give it back to her.”

Eren’s not sure he’ll ever be able to look at Hanji the same way. “I’m glad she helped, but I’m afraid I’m going to picture her reading this next time I train.”

“Lots of people read garbage like that,” Levi says. “She gets interested in something, researches it, and moves on to something else. Who knows how her head works.”

“She can be odd,” Eren says.

“Maybe she was trying to figure out why people kept trying to fuck in the mess hall and stumbled on that.”

“What!” Eren’s arms fly. “We eat there.”

“Disgusting.” Levi wrinkles his nose. “But it was years ago,” he says. “Mike caught a fresh recruit screwing a warm loaf of rye, and the trend spread like a case of dick lice.”

A gentle assault burdens Eren’s chest. He misses Mike and his jokes. He misses so many people.

He clears his throat. “Did the guy at least use butter?”

“One can only hope,” Levi says with a shrug. 

Rubbing his face, Eren shudders. He’s had his fill hearing about buffoonery today. It’s Sunday, and after a shower, a trip to the common area, and then to town with Armin and Mikasa for provisions, he’ll sharpen knives with Levi and help him scrub the bathtub and kitchen. They’ll sweep and mop, and after Sunday mutton stew in the mess hall, they’ll retreat to Levi’s quarters for tea and chess like they do every week. Eren will ask Levi if he can stay the night, and Levi will tell him to stop asking. 

He doesn’t need to ruin the remainder of the weekend thinking about Cecilio and Vitali, and how Cecilio is so much older than Vitali, nor about the disturbing parallel that Cecilio was Vitali’s Legate. 

Nothing in that book was realistic, but a few of the more innocuous details are too close to home. He supposes it’s why Hanji must have given it to Levi. 

Maybe she thought Levi felt guilty and was trying to absolve him of it. Not that it bothers Eren. Levi’s older and wiser, but he laughs at Eren’s fart jokes and makes his own. And he makes Eren feel safe and cherished in his own Levi way. 

Mostly, Eren doesn’t feel the wide span of years between them, only simple affection, respect, and friendship. 

There’s more than that, but he doesn’t have time to contemplate it. The little hand on the wall clock is creeping past seven, and though missing breakfast isn’t out of the ordinary, he has to get on with his day.

He looks at Levi, and regret is already finding a home in his chest as the words gather. “Levi,” he says, gesturing to his neck. “Can you take it off?”

He doesn’t want it removed. Eren’s only been wearing his necklace for an hour, but it feels at home. Its gentle weight reminds him Levi cares for him. He wishes he could keep it there forever. He worries for the knot at the nape of his neck. Will tying and untying it weaken the deer hide?

Perhaps Levi feels similar. He takes a breath Eren can hear, downs the rest of his tea, and stands. 

“Turn around,” he says. 

Levi removes it with as much tenderness as when he put it on and lamenting he has to bid it farewell, Eren sets in his trinket box with a pang of sadness. He’d like to put it in his pocket, but what if he loses it? 

It’s safer here.

Out of the ordinary as their morning ritual has been, and as strange as Hanji’s book made him feel, he’s filled with exuberant delight rather than worry. His head is fuzzy in a way that almost feels like he drank ale, but not so much. 

His socks and drawers are in Levi’s basket. He spares it a look, chest puffing that for the time, they’ll reside there along with Levi’s cravats and his own dirty nightshirt and drawers. Soiled laundry shouldn’t make him beam, but it does. 

Rather than allow Levi to halt him at the door and bestow him with the daily touch between his brows, Eren stops him. He takes a step forward, fast enough that Levi won’t have time to think. He pulls him close and presses their lips together. 

Eren doesn’t want to leave Levi wanting. He wants to take his breath away. 

It’s chaste and can’t possibly fully convey it, but Eren pours all his heart and gratitude into it, wishing he accomplishes even a fraction of Levi’s kind grace. 

Though it feels like it’s minutes, it has probably been seconds. Daringly, Eren lingers, applying just enough insistent pressure that he can feel the wetness at the part in Levi’s lips and taste his morning tea. 

When they pull away, Levi looks shocked, but his features soften, filling Eren’s chest with a cocky sort of pride as he promises, “I’ll be back soon.”


	10. Chapter Nine: Oceanus

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A day late, but I had a little snafu yesterday. Hopefully, this will help with any sting from the newest manga chapter. <3 Those of you who've read me over the years know I don't like tons of tags and I don't do specific warnings. But I am adding a few tags to this just to make it more accessible to people looking for something they like. Especially with the manga ending next month, I figure people might be looking around for stuff, or looking for fix-it or certain kinds of fix-it. :D 
> 
> I know what the end of this tale is, though it's not written yet. Like I said, it's fix-it, but I don't think we'll be diverging; _put your trust in me_ (and if the boys and I truly hate something in canon, we'll pretend it doesn't exist ;) )The boys will still get happiness. I'm not a plotter, but I'll play god if I must. XD
> 
> Also if you comment, please forgive my awful typos in replies. I've been the typo queen for a couple weeks. Some of you must look at my comment replies and scratch your heads wondering how in the fuck does this bitch write stories. Truly, it beats the fuck out of me, but lately, I'm total shit typing anywhere but the story document, so be warned. ;p Though don't let that stop you from commenting. I do love everyone's feedback. <3

A cold front has moved in during the night, leaving early summer feeling like mid-spring. 

For the last hour, Levi’s been watching Eren standing on the balcony of their lodgings in Shiganshina. In the breeze, his growing hair flies. His cloak lifts. He’s a burning umbra debossed into the matutinal light. 

Despite Levi’s mild orders, Eren has slept nary a wink. He turned down love-making and the offer of a shared bath. Last eve, he poked at his dinner as if it were seasoned with sawdust.

This is the first time they’ve seen the inside of these wretched walls since before the resettlement. Levi didn’t think it would be pleasant. He expected Eren might insist on staring down the newly built house that now sits where his used to be. He had fortified himself for Eren to bring up the loss of his mother or memories.

They passed the repaired rooftop where Erwin died on their way in. Where Levi saved Armin. Levi recalled Eren pleading with him, tearful, telling him about the sea and Armin’s dream. Levi thought Eren might grimace or glower at its sight, but he simply glanced up for half a blink and kept riding unfazed. 

Levi exhales. Since the ceremony when they were given those horrid medals, for Eren, that almost child-like passion of the explorer’s dreaming heart has dissolved as far as the ocean is concerned. It’s been replaced with something dark. 

Shiganshina is a bloody locale, soaked in horrors for them all, but it’s excruciating for Eren. And Levi expected Eren seeing his native district for the first time as it hasn’t stood in nearly six years would stir something loud or explosive. 

It has only hardened his jaw. 

Levi can see the angle of it now as Eren turns his head and catches him watching. It’s sharper and inured, creating the illusion of a coarsened, fully grown man, not a teenager of sixteen. 

The vision makes Levi’s boots feel as tight as his chest. 

Concerning Eren, Levi allowed himself to fret too much from the onset. It wasn’t more than a couple days of having him under his wing before Eren began seeking him out in the old SC castle. And Levi never begrudged him nor denied him an ear. 

He would revel in Eren’s resolute perseverance, listen to his flustered worries, and his indignation at just about everything. Levi would share his best advice, shitty as it likely was. He didn’t comprehend why then, but when Levi isn’t deceiving himself, he can admit there’s always been a gnawing soreness when he had an inclination that the brat might be sad. And though he offered guidance, it often wasn’t enough. Those times, Levi was a stern taskmaster and would smack the back of Eren’s head or give him so many chores he’d be forced to quell his ruminations in scrubbing and mopping. Even now, Levi still can be that bastard, though Eren doesn’t need harshness this morning, but rather, a soft kick in his stubborn arse.

“Fuck this,” Levi whispers, pouring a cup of tea. He crosses the room, steps outside, and sets it on the railing. 

Eren looks at Levi, then at the cup and huffs. 

“Be glad I’m not shoving breakfast down your throat,” says Levi, sliding the tea closer, “but you need this. And we have a long ride.”

At first, all Levi gets is a nod as Eren capitulates. He sniffs the Assam’s steam and sips. 

Ruffling Eren’s hair with the slightest touch, Levi resists telling him he’s a good boy. With the mood Eren’s in, he doubts it will elicit its usual response. 

“I’m not trying to be an arse.”

“Most of the time, you don’t need to _try._ ”

Eren doesn’t smile or laugh, but he doesn’t scowl either and takes more of his drink. “It doesn’t feel like I thought it would.”

Leaning on the railing, Levi tries to find what Eren’s peering at. It’s likely something Levi has no ability to see. It’s in Eren’s head. Strange that it’s something so close—something Levi could reach up and touch right now, and yet, he would have more luck plucking a star from the sky. 

“Mm.” Levi boots a chip of roof tile to the cobbles below, watching until it’s swallowed up in the early hour gloam where nighttime still clings. “Most shit doesn’t feel like we think it does,” he says, straightening his cravat. “Topside didn’t feel like I thought it would.”

Eren nods and then sips again. “Did it disappoint you?”

“Not exactly. It was just different,” Levi says. “Disappointment didn’t come until I figured out this shit is another trap. Only bigger.”

Eren’s head lolls in something like a nod. “Armin will be happy at least,” he says as he tugs on his earlobe. “That’s good enough for me.” 

The last word is almost a rasp, and Levi detects a lie in it. Not a malicious untruth nor a blatant falsity, more like there were a thousand unsaid words that Eren locked away in his heart. Or judging by the deep furrow between his brows, probably his mind. 

It’s just light enough to detect the glassiness in Eren’s eyes and the sullen line of his mouth. A dichotomy Levi might never grow accustomed to. How one of Eren’s features can appear despairing, another furious, and yet another stalwart.

Strange as the sensation is, looking at Eren like this—dark, disturbingly unshakable, and distant—makes Levi’s lips tingle, and the muscles in his fingers and hands coil. 

He wants to grasp the edges of Eren’s wind-swaying cloak and kiss him hard enough it obliterates that pertinacious misery that has captured him. 

Right there on the balcony, he’d like to slam Eren against the rough-hewn post holding the decking to the inn. Levi would swallow the growl Eren might very well try to give and ignore it. At least he’d be fighting. It would be better than remaining draped in this meditative torment.

Levi wets his lips. It’s early enough. Who would see? 

Contemplating the possibility of Eren’s surprised shriek and the teacup undoubtedly shattering when it teeters then meets the tile Levi earlier kicked, he picks up Eren’s empty cup and grabs him by his harness. 

“Levi …?” Eren yelps as he yanks him inside. 

A gratified tingle alights Levi’s skin as he sets the china aside. He’s Eren’s Captain. He’s Levi Ackerman. He’ll do exactly what he likes with him, and Eren needs more than a soft kick in his arse. 

“Shut up,” Levi demands as he plows Eren into the wall. It’s not as hard as he pictured only moments before, but it does the trick, he thinks, when Eren’s desolate scowl morphs to shock. 

Levi doesn’t allow Eren to utter another word as he tugs his head down. Their lips crash viciously, and Levi makes sure it hurts. 

He hopes it bruises. 

He hopes it bleeds.

He scrapes his teeth wherever he can. He bites.

He swallows the squeaks of confusion and Eren’s hesitation and nips his tongue, and grasps his jaw. At a bite to his lip, Eren gives in and tugs at Levi’s hair, moans, his long leg twining around Levi’s to pull him closer. 

For a moment, all Levi can feel is Eren, the wet fever of his mouth, his breath in his lungs. As much as it might have been an asinine attempt to scrub that expression from Eren’s face, Levi’s being swept away, and Eren, who is so often submissive and allows Levi the lead begins to gain ground when he grabs Levi’s arse and rolls his hips. 

Levi raises himself on his toes to come as near to towering over him as he can. He thrusts his hand beneath Eren’s shirt, nails scratching the small of his back. Levi can taste blood, undoubtedly Eren’s and probably some of his own. He only wishes Eren would be able to feel this kiss for the day’s remainder. That it would stay with him until the sun departs.

Kissing Eren all morning would be preferable to riding through unknown territory to the ocean. Fucking him would be better. Fucking him until he smiles and laughs again would be perfect. 

But they have an expedition, and Levi can hear chattering in the hallway and the sound of doors being opened and closed. Then Hanji’s enthusiastic skips drawing closer. She probably hasn’t slept either and is annoyingly coffee-infused.

He tugs on Eren’s bottom lip one last time and skims his lips across his jaw. Eren pants into his neck, one hand still tugging Levi’s hair, his other clamped tight on his arse. 

“Was that for being a brat?” Eren whispers.

“It was because I said so.” 

Levi doesn’t want to let go, but he does. 

“Hanji’s at the door,” he says. He pulls away and admires the lovebites he knows will have disappeared by lunch. 

The pounding knock comes, followed by a high-pitched, “Leeevi …”

“Shit,” Eren says, straightening his harness and tugging his cloak into place. Levi almost wants to laugh, considering Eren’s hair is a mess, and his lips are smudged with blood and swollen in places. 

Levi tosses a handkerchief in his face.

“Shit,” Eren repeats. “I’m not in my room.”

“Who gives a shit,” Levi says as he strides to the door. “You came for morning tea,” he adds before muttering, “next time, I’ll tell that four-eyes to get us a double.”

The four-eyes in question bursts in as soon as Levi flicks the lock and pulls open the door. He slams it behind her. 

“Why do you have to be so loud so early?”

He knows better than to have expected something different. It is easily anticipated given Eren’s presence in Levi’s room at five in the morning, but Hanji’s jaw drops, she covers her mouth and then smirks. Although she has a penchant for idiocy, to Levi’s relief, she grants him respite from her silent teasing and rocks on her feet while Eren squirms as he pilfers yet another of Levi’s handkerchiefs and stuffs it in his pocket. 

If there were only a way for Eren to curb his timorous blushing when required. His ears and cheeks are near as rosy as his lips, his neck as well, and if Levi were to lift his shirt, he’d find crimson to his navel. Levi rubs his brow to keep from rolling his eyes. Even Eren’s dick roseates when Levi’s indelicate bedroom whispers swerve to unchaste. 

He thinks of earthworms and mud and chicken coops in that order to stifle the vision of Eren’s blushing cock. It’s irksome enough that only a few moments before, he made himself half-hard, and soon he’ll have to mount his stallion. 

It’s a blessing Hanji doesn’t know Eren knows she knows, or the comments likely would have led to him screaming and doing that thing when he flails his arms. 

“Having morning tea?” Hanji asks. She drops the perverted expression and rubs her hands. “We mount up in a quarter of an hour. Vesen and Raðljóst are packed.” 

Eren slings his bag over his shoulder. He isn’t as distraught as he was ten minutes ago, but his fingers are tense around his satchel’s strap. The melancholy resolve he had on the balcony dissipated when Levi kissed him, replaced by what Levi can only characterize as somber arousal, yet now both moods have fled, and his eyes dart about. 

Levi pours him another cup of tea. It’s tepid by now, though Eren needs some form of sustenance. He looks at Hanji as he holds up the pot. “My guess is you still have no taste in morning beverages.”

“I don’t want your grass water.” She sticks out her tongue. “I had coffee.”

“Fiend.” 

Levi taps the cup to Eren’s elbow. “You only had one.”

Quietly, Eren says, “thanks,” and drags the back of his hand across his mouth as though checking for more blood and saliva. He takes it all in one go like the recruits do with whiskey and sets down the china. 

“Aren’t you excited, Eren?” asks Hanji. “Armin’s been down there for an hour.”

“Yeah, I bet.” Except for the twist in his brow, Eren’s expression looks flat. He glances at the entryway. “I should get down there too, I guess.” 

Hanji gives Levi a confused look before telling Eren, “We have a few more minutes.” 

“That’s okay,” he says, making for the door when he attempts to fake a smile and fails. “I want to give Raðljóst a few carrots.”

“Be down soon,” Levi says as Eren sulks away. He pulls at his harness over his chest. 

“Is he all right?” Hanji asks after Eren’s footsteps recede. “Obviously, something more than morning tea was happening here, but he looks … menaced.

“You two didn’t have a fight, did you?”

“No.” Levi starts strapping on the rest of his knives. He’d like to stab the sky with them. Or perhaps he’ll stab the sea if they find it.

“I want this shit done quick,” he says. Hanji blinks at him in that way she always has when—as she says—he gets _dangerous._ He’s never been able to unravel what it is that gives it away. He’s always dangerous. “This trip is scrambling his head. He didn’t even—fuck …”

Hanji pokes his shoulder. Sometimes for all her nonsense and bullshit and her terrible jokes and insanity, she can drop it for a heartbeat or two. 

“He didn’t _what_?” she asks. “Take a shit.”

Levi sweeps on his cloak like a shield, resisting the call to pull up his hood. It’s only a piece of fabric, and it won’t protect him from her prying anyhow. “He didn’t sleep. He didn’t have breakfast.” 

“This is askew,” Hanji says while stepping into his space. 

“What the fuck are you prattling about?”

She reaches for his cravat. “Let me fix your little neckerchief.”

He slaps her hand away. She’ll probably leave coffee stains on it. 

“Levi. Just let me. If you can help me with baths, I can fix this.” 

Relenting, he props a hand on his hip to display his disquiet at her affront. It’s probably going to get dirty anyway, and there’s a narrow possibility it may mend her mouth shut so he can think for a moment. 

“Eren does like breakfast,” she says as she tugs at the fabric. “Strange, he didn’t want any …” 

Of course, it wouldn’t quiet her. Levi sighs. Eren didn’t care for many of the things Eren often wants. Like chess and evening tea or nighttime hugs in bed. They wouldn’t have a quiet private place to use the necklace during the expedition, but Levi had anticipated Eren might have needed it the night before. Even if he didn’t bring it, he could have asked. And if using the words that still make him squirm was impossible, if he had truly wanted it, he would have found a different way to make the request. 

Eren can say Levi’s name a certain way, and even after their short time together, Levi knows what he requires. 

“He doesn’t like much right now,” he says when Hanji steps back, her expression leaving it clear she’s admiring her handiwork. 

“Maybe he’s nervous,” she says.

“That’s not it.” Levi chews on his lip. It’s still bleeding inside. “It’s fucking with his head. We find this bullshit wall and port, and then we come back. No fucking around.”

“It’s only a survey, Levi,” says Hanji. She looks almost sad for him, and it drives his mood from pissed to foul. “We’ll be away for one night.”

“Then it’s another night in this shit district.”

“We’re going to have to go back. If what Eren’s father—”

“Grisha Jäger.”

“ _Grisha_.” She crosses her arms. “If what Grisha said is true and we find it, the troops must be moved to the sea.”

Levi holds up his dagger before he shoves it into his boot. “Care to enlighten me with something I didn’t know?”

“Stop with the dramatics,” Hanji says. “We can’t stay in Trost forever.”

Levi glares. He’s a soldier. Eren is a soldier. But since life calmed, it didn’t feel like it anymore. Staying at HQ in Trost with Eren visiting every day and stretched in his bed so often almost felt like they were sharing a tiny flat. A home. Eren’s trinket box lives in his bedroom _._ Levi gave Eren an entire drawer. Despite a twitch in his lips at the memory, Levi’s lungs feel tight when he recalls Eren grinning as he walked through his door with a neatly folded bundle of clothes under his arm.

He grits his teeth and grasps his satchel from the hook. “You figure out the next step when we get back, and I’ll get his head back on straight.”

Hanji nods. “We can talk about it later.”

After dispatching the most inept and cumbersome titan Levi has ever encountered, they stop to rest. He felt more pity for it than he had any others. For all he knows, it was the last mindless titan in existence.

It’s mid-afternoon and warm enough that, without exception, everyone but Levi has removed their cloaks. 

Hanji is already harassing him about it. “How are you not melting in that?” Her hand waves before his face. “The sun feels nice,” she sing-songs while stretching out like one of those nasty alley cats that prowl around HQ’s courtyard.

“Tch.” He doesn’t peel his attention from the treeline close to where Eren is sitting with Armin and Mikasa. “It also burns.”

“A few minutes won’t blister your delicate skin.”

Meeting her eye, he tugs his cloak tighter. “Did it escape your attention that I lived in a hole in the ground for over two and half decades?” 

“I’ve seen you without one plenty of times before.”

“Just eat your fucking lunch. The sooner you do, the sooner we can get out of here.”

Levi’s feeling obstinate. He had considered removing it until she began pestering him, but sitting in the grass basking will result in lounging and, in turn, laziness, and then it will take them longer to reach the infernal sea. 

She breaks a roll in two and holds half before his mouth. “Only if you eat too. You were Mr Bent-out-of-shape just this morning because Eren didn’t have breakfast.” She pushes the rye so close it touches his nose, and Levi sneers at the crumbs all over her chin. “You don’t want me calling you a hypocrite. Besides, I’m the Commander here, and the horses need more rest, and so does everyone else but you.”

He’s inclined to stab the bread but snatches it instead. Hanji’s going to terrorize him further if he doesn’t relent at least half an inch. He takes a bite and chews, and regardless that his stomach is tense and telling him it doesn’t need or want food, he takes a second bite. 

Swallowing loudly, he stares at her. “Satisfied?” 

“Very good. That’s a good first step.” 

He glances toward the trees again. Eren scoots back from the rest of his friends as though the fire they’re heating the kettle over was too close. Jean, Connie, and Sasha have joined them, but Eren leans against a rock, picking at his sandwich and staring beyond any of their reaches while everyone else is yammering and smiling. 

“Eren. He looks … what does he look like …?” Hanji says, swirling her hands toward the sky as if the currents above would tell her. “He looks … virtuous.”

Levi doesn’t disagree, but he sneers at her anyway. He’s more virtuous than all of them. He looks _special_. Something about him stands out. It did from the first moment Levi saw him, and it’s not because of how Levi feels about Eren. He radiates an emotion or an aura, or perhaps it’s something as simple as a demeanor that ignites him like a candle’s flame in an inky room. 

He reminds Levi of the sun trying to break through clouds on a winter’s day. Vengeful and hot and burning.

“Wanna tell me about it?” Hanji asks.

“Will you leave me the fuck be if I say no?”

Hanji laughs. “Why would you ask such a ridiculous question?”

Though Levi can’t hug his cloak much tighter, he tries anyway and takes a breath. He knows where this is going, and these talks—ones of the emotional variety—always cause his throat to constrict. 

“Come on,” Hanji prods when he doesn’t say anything. “I’m his Commander, and you’re his Captain—among other things—, and he’s Humanity’s Hope. If something’s going on, we have to have a chat.”

“Fine, you harpy.” Levi growls. He’s lost to what precisely has Eren listing like an unsecured shutter, though he has enough suspicions to bullshit his way through the conversation.

Levi dents his bread with his thumb. It’s better than kicking a tree. He loathes unknowns. What he loathes more is discussing them.

“I don’t think he knows what’s the matter. Maybe he’s seeing shit again. He’s been off ever since we left for Shigan-fucking-shina.”

“Did you ask him what was wrong?”

“No, I sat there with my thumb up my arse.” He flicks the tip of her nose with it in an attempt to dispel some of the nastiness from his system. 

“Ouch!”

“He didn’t want to talk.”

“He told me he hasn’t been having as hard a time with the nightmares,” says Hanji. “Is that true, or is he shitting me?”

Levi pinches his brow. They’ve been fewer, but it’s probably because Levi’s been helping him—maybe hurting him. 

“Not as much,” Levi says. He shouldn’t admit it. The confession catches on the tip of his tongue. It’s direct confirmation, and he doesn’t like her unspoken assumption he knows all of Eren’s eventide habits. The reality of it stings like a vile wasp, and he’s inclined to believe it’s because it’s not the case, but he wishes it were. 

“He doesn’t sleep in my room _every_ fucking night,” he says. “I don’t know what happens when he’s alone.”

“But he sleeps there most nights.” Strangely, Hanji doesn’t smirk at that. “I notice _everything_.”

She probably stands outside his quarters. “So you fixed your missing eye to my bedroom wall?”

“Hah! I wish I could.” She laughs, and from anyone else, it might sound thoughtfully wistful, but the crease in her brow belies her woe. She cranes her neck to stare at the sky, and Levi notices the clouds reflected in her goggles. “I don’t sleep much. I used to bother Moblit when it was late.” She scratches her cheek. “But I can’t anymore, so now I walk the halls if I have to clear my head. There’s rarely light from under Eren’s door.”

Levi stares at his feet. “You’re still nosey.”

“Hm … speaking of that …” Hanji twirls her greasy ponytail around her finger. “I bet you didn’t try that stuff on Eren last night. It might have helped.”

Maybe it would have. It did the night before they left, but that isn’t how it works between them. When he needs it, Eren waits until bedtime. He hands Levi his necklace and asks that he put it around his neck. When the cloverleaf rests at the base of his throat, most often, Levi tucks strands of Eren’s wayward hair behind his ear, and although Eren doesn’t require the aid, he then helps him over his lap. He rubs Eren’s back, concocts a ridiculous bullshit reason for the _punishment_ , then proceeds to lightly spank him. 

So far, it hasn’t taken more than ten minutes for Eren to release whatever anguish has ensnared him before he lets go, and most times, cries. 

Levi wonders how long it would have taken last night. 

He rubs his elbow. “He didn’t ask me to.”

“I thought he didn’t want to ask?”

Levi grits his teeth. The first conversation with Hanji about this was as irritating as killing five titans by his lonesome, and he snuck _Secrets Inside the Castle Walls_ onto her desk while she was meeting with Armin so he wouldn’t have to endure her inane commentary nor any inquisitive remarks. Now here he is again, and there’s nowhere to run to. Just a vast expanse of lilting grass peppered by tiny blue flowers. 

He scrapes up the ground with his bootheel. “I gave him a thing, so he didn’t have to.”

“Ooh! Like Vitali’s choker?”

“None of your business,” he hisses, flicking blades of grass. “I think he left it at HQ anyway. Not like we can do it in a fucking tent in the middle of nowhere.”

“True,” Hanji says, “the smacking sounds might be suspicious. Mikasa would probably stab you.”

“Tch. She could try.” He can imagine it. Mikasa, raging and thinking terrible, violent Captain Levi, who kicked her brother in the face and beat the shit out of him, still beats him. 

“It seems like it’s still helping him.” 

She rolls over in the grass, lying on her belly like a snake. She opens her bag, and no matter what she might think, Levi is aware she’s trying to drag out the conversation and their riding break when she pulls out a sandwich. 

“I’m glad you’ve still been up to the kinkery.” She unwraps the package and holds it out. “I gave you that book for a reason.”

“Fucking shithead.” Levi ate two bites of his roll. He doesn’t need stilton and greens. He pushes it toward her face. “And it’s not _kinkery._ It’s just a thing.”

“You spank him, yes? That’s kinkery, my little friend. What else do you do?”

Levi’s fingers tighten in the wool he’s still clinging to. “It’s not like that, you idjit.”

“Why?” She sounds genuinely curious. “Because it doesn’t give you an erection?”

Yes, that’s a part of it. Levi also doesn’t flog Eren nor debase him. He doesn’t force his submission, and he doesn’t _lord_ over him. It’s always Eren’s decision. Admittedly, Levi likes the feel of Eren’s weight on his lap, and he relishes the elegant line of his spine when he skims its svelte length. The soft percussing of his slaps to Eren’s backside are tranquilizing—enough, he’d like to know what they'd sound like if he smacked it harder or on just his bare skin. 

But, even if he did, it’s not going to make him hard. 

“Is it because you don’t have a cabinet full of paddles?”

He whips his half-eaten half-roll on the ground. “I don’t wear a cape!”

Hanji touches his cloak. “This is sort of like a cape.”

“You’re sort of a prick hole.”

“I’m trying to help,” she says, though she doesn’t seem offended. As much as Levi grumps at her, she tolerates his bristly nature better than anyone save for Eren. And this is one of those moments her nonsense drifts to whatever jar she stores it in. She doesn’t seem normal by a stretch, but it leaves him to ponder whether there are ten different personalities in that egghead of hers. 

“I’m trying to help the both of you,” she adds when he just watches Eren. 

Sometimes Levi wonders why he’s like this. If he could talk or convey his thoughts, it would perhaps unburden him of agitation, but expressing himself has never been a simple task. It’s like navigating a labyrinth. Not unless it has to do with measured violence or control. He can speak leaping circles around a merchant for a better deal. He can con people. Words have flowed when he instructed his compatriots on how to complete a murder or robbery. But in this … they evade his disobliging tongue. 

Someone else would say _thanks_ , but Levi’s always had a hard time with that word. Not because he doesn’t feel it at times, but from him, it sounds weak.

Not that what Hanji’s saying about kinkery makes any sense in respect to him and Eren, but she’s making an effort, shortsighted as it may be. 

He can give her a little bit. “I’ll fix him when we get back.”

“You can’t _fix_ him,” Hanji says. “We can’t fix anyone. We can only be ourselves and, in some cases, what someone needs.”

She doesn’t give him a chance to bicker with her or make a testy comment. She gets up and walks away toward the brats at their fire, sandwich in hand, and for a moment, while Levi watches her striding alone, he can see the ghost of Moblit’s dusty blue robe over her shoulders and his slippers on her feet. 

* * *

The wall exists.

A hulking monolith that’s more pale _gray,_ than grey. It’s hideous. 

Levi slows Vesen to a trot and pulls beside Eren. His eyes are hard and narrowed as he points toward the monstrosity. 

“There it is.” Eren looks at Levi and drops his voice. “Like what I saw in my old man’s memories.”

The sea has to be on the other side. There’s been a strange smell in the air since lunch, the stench growing heavier as each minute ticks by. Levi inhales. The scent is like the essence of rotten meat entwined with a salt shaker. 

The wildlife has morphed as well. Loud screeching birds have been sailing above them for over an hour. One lands on the wall, and Levi sneers at it when it cocks its head, and its beady black eyes meet his. 

“That way,” Eren calls. He looks over his shoulder at Hanji, then back at Levi. That distancing shield he’s draped around himself grows thicker. “I was right.”

There are more repulsive avians at the sea’s shore, and the pungent perfume of fish-scent and salt wafts from the lapping water. 

They hitch their horses, and for a second time since dawn, Levi’s tempted to pull up his hood, if only to protect him from the droppings ceaselessly falling from the winged beasts.

“Not taking off your boots?” Hanji says as she drops hers in a careless heap. 

Eren looks up at Levi from where he’s seated on the ground, unwrapping the bandages from his feet. It’s only a moment, but for a blink, he looks like himself. And perhaps there’s an amused twinkle in his indecipherable eyes while he thinks with a silent snicker, _I knew you wouldn’t set foot in there, Levi._

And then, as surely as Eren’s mirth was never there, it departs when Armin waves his arms at him. Once again, all Levi can find in Eren is misery swathed in cold calculation. 

“Eren!” Armin jumps in the shallow water now, his smile so irritatingly bright. Levi’s never seen Armin’s chest puffed before, but it is now—with all the fulfillment, and pride Levi would expect from someone who just realized a dream. 

“Coming,” Eren yells and then finishes rolling his pant legs. 

“Not going in,” Levi tells Hanji as he watches Eren stand, brush off his arse, and join his friends. 

Her elbow bumps his. “You could at least come closer.”

Chewing the corner of his lip, he looks out at the horizon. “In a couple of minutes.”

Levi’s lacking quips and insults, poor of his sardonic repartee, all splurged throughout the day. He holds his arms over his chest to replace his depleted defenses and digs his fingers into his biceps. 

Hanji doesn’t persist. She doesn’t pull him along, only gives his cloak a tug with a purse on her lips before she says, “Suit yourself.”

When she turns to join everyone else, Levi slips his hand over his chest. Something tight and painful is winding beneath his ribs. _This should be breathtaking_ , he thinks as he stares into the distance. If not for him, for seeing the joy from everyone else who is still alive—Sasha and Connie splashing each other, Jean making an arse of himself while gagging on salty water, Armin marveling, Mikasa _smiling_ , Hanji screeching wildly as she sprints across the sand, and Eren … 

His beautiful Eren, who hates the walls, stands on the crashing cusp of freedom, hair blowing in the caress of the gales, his shoulders broad, green eyes greener in the summer’s sun, gaze full of wonderment. 

… At least that’s how it should be. 

The winds gusts. 

Levi remembers the first time he saw a lake. The trees on the other side felt so far away. Like it would take him days to ride there. He stood at its edge, the water teasing at his boots, its undulating veneer distorting his unfamiliar reflection. It was the first time he’d seen it in years in something other than lusterless tin. 

At the time, Isabel and Farlan, not long gone from his side, a tiny sentimental shard in his heart embraced the finality of their demise while he set his eyes on the _open_ and _forever_ they would never see. 

A wave crashes. Everyone save for Eren hoots and laughs.

There’s nothing to be seen on the other side of this expanse, no trees, no mountains, nor lonesome shore. Looking out at this brine and the azure and infinitude should inspire hope, but it merely drags in alarm and uncertainty. Levi made it out of the ground. He made it out of the walls … they all did, and yet, this gargantuan lake— _the ocean, the sea_ —is only a bigger, bluer, saltier wall. 

There’s a realization as Eren stands, pointing—foam and tides rippling around his ankles as though they were threatening to pull him under; that’s where Eren’s been looking for the last two days. 

A place none of them have ever seen but might steal him away. 

The ceaseless squawking of the winged monsters above meld with the delighted screaming at the shore. Levi should retreat. Most of his body twitches to rejoin Vesen and the horses and allow everyone their antics and Eren his spellbound contemplations, but his cursed feet rebel when Hanji bends over to look at another creature in the water. 

“Don’t touch that,” Levi says. He’s already told her six times not to pick anything up, that it might be poisonous. If it weren’t for him babysitting everyone, who knows what would happen. Perhaps a sea creature as large as a titan looms nearby and will swallow them all up. Maybe there are water titans too.

That slimy thing with multiple arms Hanji kept poking with a stick looked freakish enough. What if there are larger varieties? 

Hanji scurries to meet him, holding something small and concave in her hands. It has two sides and is covered in a repellant crust. “Look, Levi,” she says. “I think it’s a shell of some sort. Like a snail has, but different. Something must go inside of these two pieces.”

She claps it together and then shoves it toward him, but he keeps her at bay with a hand to her chest. “Keep it to yourself, and don’t come crying to me if it bites you.” 

“Grumpy,” Hanji says. “Why don’t you take your boots off. Dip a toe in.”

“I’ll dip your head in.”

Levi hates the ocean. The air stinks, there’s sand everywhere, the grains glaring at him as though they’re plotting to find their way into his clothes and hair. It makes everyone giggle and scream except for Eren. He just broods. 

Sasha, Connie, and Jean are practically swimming while Mikasa sits with Armin, watching him diligently sketch on the map, a little contraption propped before him that he keeps looking through. 

Eren’s still planted in the same spot he was an hour before. He’s barely twitched a muscle. 

If they were alone, Levi might brave the prospect of the salty water invading his boots and come to stand beside him and see if he could follow Eren’s eyes to what draws them now. He might touch his shoulder or let his knuckles brush Eren’s. Levi wouldn’t speak. He would wait until Eren did. 

But they aren’t alone, and now Eren is trudging toward him, looking beautiful and more of a man than he did in the morning. He hasn’t gotten taller, his shoulders haven’t filled out further, he hasn’t grown a beard, but the last bit of innocence that still clung as he rode through the sun toward this horrid destination has slipped away just as Eren’s silky strands are pulled from behind his ear by the hateful ocean breeze. 

The change is quiet. It’s not profound. It wasn’t gradual. More like a flittering recalcitrant leaf in early December hanging from a tree being gently tugged away by winter’s ascent. It’s gone. 

“I’m going to the horses,” Eren mutters as he walks past Levi and Hanji. He gives Levi one of those pained expressions Levi only sees when they’re alone before he must notice and schools his face back to icy determination. 

They make camp far enough from the sea that the bouquet of saline rot is tolerable. Barely. Levi can still hear the waves crash. They’ve moved farther up the sand over the two hours they spent at the shoreline, and Levi imagines them sneaking nearer during the night when the moon is high and then engulfing them.

Connie and Sasha have started a fire, the tents are set, and Eren, though helping with the camp’s preparations, is still silent, save for an occasional one or two-word answer to any question. Levi can’t stand it, and other than him, everyone has walked in the brine. Sasha, Connie, and Jean are dripping with the feculent hellbroth. 

Levi summons the Captain because his neck is tight, his hands are fisting, and although he’ll have Eren alone in their tent at bedtime, his patience for the ocean and Eren’s quietude has worn so thin, he’s close to rending a tree and ranting until the sea dries up. 

“Everyone, go wash,” he orders. “I’m not breaking bread near filthy swine.”

Modesty isn’t a luxury they have in the field. The group branches off to different areas of the river. All within sight of each other, yet far enough, they’re afforded the illusion of privacy. Mikasa and Sasha settle in a small bend under a tree’s overhang. Armin, Jean, and Connie stand at its center as if they had no cares in the world. Hanji follows Eren and Levi. 

Levi halts her when he spots a secluded outcrop. He thrusts a bar of soap into her hand. “I know you’ll do a shit job, but wash up. Don’t forget your hair,” he adds. “And keep everyone else occupied. Make sure those sopping idiots scrub their clothes too.”

“Yessir,” she says, smirking while giving him an over-enthusiastic salute across her shirtless chest.

This is the first chance Levi’s had to talk to Eren alone since morning, and washing and being bare usually helps his thoughts flow. It’s not like in the bathtub where Levi can hold Eren, massage his neck and shoulders, and give him feathery kisses, but perhaps water and soap and working the kinks out of his muscles will loosen his tongue.

Levi navigates the river’s edge, and Eren follows one step behind, so he’s half trailing him–half next to him. They don’t hold hands like Levi wants and suspects Eren does too. There’s a boulder beside an inlet bathed in the sunshine’s kaleidoscope from the fluttering leaves of a bankside willow. Plenty of room to lay out their clothes and boots and let the settling rays burn the sweat away. 

In silence, they undress, but Eren’s jaw works like he’s trying to figure out how to speak again. Levi’s never seen Eren say so few words in one day. Never. It’s disturbing and worrisome. It should cause enough fret to keep him from appreciating the lines of Eren’s baring body—the sharpness of his hip bones, the soft dips either side that slope to his groin, or the silky hair that does little to conceal what’s there.

Levi should be more concerned with Eren’s despondent expression, but focusing on his tan skin, glinting leg hairs, and his balls peeking from beneath his soft penis makes Levi want to do things he cannot do here, and this intimate area of Eren’s body, unlike his tense shoulders and shiny eyes is at least comforting in its normalcy. Familiar. 

Levi’s not good at talking. He’s even worse at encouraging other people to talk. Usually, Eren offers him an invitation—a plea of some sort—, and Levi’s waiting for it. Waiting for him to do more than just stand there naked and beautiful and in agony. 

Wading further, until the water reaches mid-thigh, Levi holds out a bar of the cassis soap Eren likes so much. “Your neck looks dirty.”

His other hand hovers in offer. He can’t truly give Eren the care he needs here, but he can wash his back. 

Eren accepts the soap, finding a nice flat rock to rest on, and starts lathering like Levi gave him an order. “I want to go home,” he finally says.

“Thought as much.” Levi scans the sky for the winged terrors. “Soon,” he says, gritting his teeth at how far away it feels. 

He feels like a liar offering sweetly deceptive platitudes. 

“I’ve been a shit today,” Eren says. “I wasn’t ready.” He runs his soapy fingers through his hair. “I was more ready when I was nine.”

Levi swallows. He wants to put his hand on Eren’s knee. There’s a pressure point there that never fails to bring back his attention when he wanders too far into his own head. “Shit was different when you were nine.”

Eren glowers at the bubbles on the surface of the river. Maybe he glowers at something else. He releases a loud breath. “Sometimes I wish I was still nine.”

Levi isn’t sure he’d want to be nine again. Wishing for one age over another never led him to a place he felt was pinnacle or preferable and safe. His mother was alive when he was nine, but that’s the only bright spot. Levi doesn’t speak. It’s another moment where words evade him, and there’s no solace so close to the sea, but he pokes Eren’s toe with his own, and even in that small touch, he can feel his pent-up emotions ready to explode. 

“Did you see Armin?” Eren says. “He was so happy. Staring at the ocean, kicking water. Smiling so big. He even smiled while he was drawing on that shitty map. I hate maps.” He scrubs at the back of his neck like he’s trying to tear something off. “He’s like me, and he still doesn’t see it.”

Levi bites his lip. He washes his shoulders. He delays because it’s all he can do. “Armin’s not like you.”

“He’s a shifter too.”

“So what?” Levi shrugs. “That doesn’t make you the same.”

“All Armin saw was freedom. He was in awe.” He flings a smooth river stone into the water. He looks at Levi, dewy-eyed and pent up with fury and things that Levi doesn’t know what to call. “It was a lie. There’s no freedom on the shore. It seems like there should be, but there isn’t.”

Levi wants to say, _I can’t help you here. I can’t hold you here._ He also doesn’t cover the truth with lies. “It’s not a happy end.”

“No,” Eren says. “It’s a beginning. Everything was a lie.” He looks so disappointedly angry while still so furiously determined. Levi almost expects Eren to singe the river to ash. “I’ll give us our freedom.”

Levi’s never doubted anyone or anything less than he doubts Eren now. 

“I want to go home,” Eren mumbles again. He looks at Levi, so lost for a blink. Just like he does in his quarters when he’s struggling. “I should have brought my—my necklace,” he says, playing with the silt in the river, touching his neck. “The walls at the inns are so fucking thin. But I need it. I need you like I can’t have you here.”

Levi chances a covert touch to Eren’s bare hip. He digs his fingers in for a breath. And how hard it is to pull himself away. “Not long,” he says. 

If there was a way, Levi would do it right there, right now. He’d sit on that rock where their clothes are and do whatever Eren required. He’d pull him across his lap and punish Eren in the waning light, then hold him and be inside of him and put him back together in the grass. 

But he can’t. 

“A couple more days,” he reaffirms. “I’ll take care of you.”

They’ll finish washing then dry unclothed in the sun. Then they’ll eat, and at the least afterward, Levi will have Eren alone, where, in their assigned tent, they’ll shove their bedrolls together, and Levi will hold Eren, and if any prying arsehole sticks their nose in, he’ll glare at them and bark to get the hell out in his Captain’s voice. 

It feels like months, but in only two nights, they’ll be home.


End file.
